Effects of H-2 and vitamin A on micrognathia in congenic mice.

Pregnant mice congenic with C57BL/10 (B10.A, B10.BR, B10.D2, B10.A(2R), B10.A(5R), B10.A(15R), B10.A(1R), B10.A(18R), and B10.OL) were fed Purina Mouse Chow or the same diet plus 200 IU of vitamin A daily. The pregnant dams were sacrificed on the eighteenth day of gestation, and the fetuses were sexed and examined for defects in mandibular development. On average, micrognathia occurred five times more frequently in female (1.5%) than male (0.3%) fetuses. The addition of vitamin A to the diet affected only females, reducing the frequency of this defect to that observed in males from dams fed the control diet. Micrognathia was strongly associated with micro- or anophthalmia, but not with defects of the palate. C57BL/10 fetuses had the highest frequency of micrognathia (3.2%) and B10.D2 and B10.A(5R) fetuses had the lowest (0.1%). The results suggest that a locus distal to C4 and perhaps proximal to Qa-1 may exert a moderate influence on mandibular development and a second locus proximal to E beta may have a weak effect.