Response to Gerlic et al.

Abstract

Gerlic et al. contacted us a few months ago regarding the concerns expressed in the accompanying letter. We have communicated with them about their observations relative to conclusions from our original paper (Im et al., 2011) and for the field moving forward. Based on their data, we performed a separate DNA sequence analysis of the Nlrp1a locus in our SREBP-1a-deficient (SREBP-1aDF) mice and confirmed that it is derived from the 129 strain. However, the issues raised by this observation are almost certainly more complicated than the tight linkage between the Srebf1 and Nlrp1a loci and the extent of backcrossing.