title: Intersectional Cre driver lines generated using split-intein mediated split-Cre reconstitution.
abstract: Tissue and cell type highly specific Cre drivers are very rare due to the fact that most genes or promoters used to direct Cre expressions are generally expressed in more than one tissues and/or in multiple cell types. We developed a split-intein based split-Cre system for highly efficient Cre-reconstitution through protein splicing. This split-intein-split-Cre system can be used to intersect the expression patterns of two genes or promoters to restrict full-length Cre reconstitution in their overlapping domains. To test this system in vivo, we selected several conserved human enhancers to drive the expression of either Cre-N-intein-N, or intein-C-Cre-C transgene in different brain regions. In all paired CreN/CreC transgenic mice, Cre-dependent reporter was efficiently induced specifically in the intersectional expression domains of two enhancers. This split-intein based method is simpler to implement compared with other strategies for generating highly-restricted intersectional Cre drivers to study complex tissues such as the nervous system.
authors: Department of Cell Biology, Box 3709, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
authors: Ping
authors: P
authors: Wang
authors: Tianrui
authors: T
authors: Chen
authors: Katsuyasu
authors: K
authors: Sakurai
authors: Bao-Xia
authors: BX
authors: Han
authors: Zhigang
authors: Z
authors: He
authors: Guoping
authors: G
authors: Feng
authors: Fan
authors: F
authors: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D023061:Gene Order; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D019426:Integrases / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D047668:Inteins / Q000235:genetics*; D051379:Mice; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D019154:Protein Splicing; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; C045073:Cre recombinase; D019426:Integrases