The increasing numbers of patients with chronic kidney disease combined with no satisfying
interventions for preventing or curing the disease emphasize the need to better understand
the genes involved in the initiation and progression of complex renal diseases, their
interactions with other host genes, and the environment. Linkage and association studies in
human, rat, and mouse have been successful in identifying genetic loci for various disease-
related phenotypes but have thus far not been very successful identifying underlying genes …