Random mutagenesis of the mouse genome: a strategy for discovering gene function and the molecular basis of disease.
Mutagenesis of mice with N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) is a phenotype-driven approach to unravel gene function and discover new biological pathways. Phenotype-driven approaches have the advantage of making no assumptions about the function of genes and their products and have been successfully applied to the discovery of novel gene-phenotype relationships in many physiological systems. ENU mutagenesis of mice is used in many large-scale and more focused projects to generate and identify novel mouse models for the study of gene functions and human disease. This review examines the strategies and tools used in ENU mutagenesis screens to efficiently generate and identify functional mutations.
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Nhung
N
Nguyen
Louise M
LM
Judd
Anastasia
A
Kalantzis
Belinda
B
Whittle
Andrew S
AS
Giraud
Ian R
IR
van Driel
D000818:Animals; D001947:Breeding / Q000379:methods; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005038:Ethylnitrosourea / Q000009:adverse effects; D005260:Female; D005796:Genes / Q000502:physiology*; D016678:Genome / Q000187:drug effects*; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / Q000235:genetics; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D016296:Mutagenesis; D010641:Phenotype
D005038:Ethylnitrosourea