title: Genetic background affects human glial fibrillary acidic protein promoter activity.
abstract: The human glial fibrillary acidic protein (hGFAP) promoter has been used to generate numerous transgenic mouse lines, which has facilitated the analysis of astrocyte function in health and disease. Here, we evaluated the expression levels of various hGFAP transgenes at different ages in the two most commonly used inbred mouse strains, FVB/N (FVB) and C57BL/6N (B6N). In general, transgenic mice maintained on the B6N background displayed weaker transgene expression compared with transgenic FVB mice. Higher level of transgene expression in B6N mice could be regained by crossbreeding to FVB wild type mice. However, the endogenous murine GFAP expression was equivalent in both strains. In addition, we found that endogenous GFAP expression was increased in transgenic mice in comparison to wild type mice. The activities of the hGFAP transgenes were not age-dependently regulated. Our data highlight the importance of proper expression analysis when non-homologous recombination transgenesis is used.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Physiology, University of Saarland, Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Xianshu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.forename: Aiman S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Saab
authors.forename: Wenhui
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Isolde K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Hoberg
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kirchhoff
authors.forename: Anja
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scheller
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015153:Blotting, Western; D001947:Breeding; D003433:Crosses, Genetic; D005260:Female; D015870:Gene Expression; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D005904:Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D008822:Mice, Transgenic; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D019076:Transgenes / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D005904:Glial Fibrillary Acidic Protein; D012333:RNA, Messenger