title: Characterization and Validation of Cre-Driver Mouse Lines.
abstract: Conditional gene manipulations in mice are increasingly popular strategies in biomedical research. These approaches rely on the production of conditional genetically engineered mutant mouse (GEMM) lines with mutations in protein-encoding genes. These conditional GEMMs are then bred with one or several transgenic mouse lines expressing a site-specific recombinase, most often the Cre recombinase, in a tissue-specific manner. Conditional GEMMs can only be exploited if Cre transgenic mouse lines are available to generate somatic mutations, and thus the number of Cre transgenic lines has significantly increased over the last 15 years. Once produced, these transgenic lines must be validated for reliable, efficient, and specific Cre expression and Cre-mediated recombination. In this overview, the minimum level of information that is ideally required to validate a Cre-driver transgenic line is first discussed. The vagaries associated with validation procedures are considered next, and some solutions are proposed to assess the expression and activity of constitutive or inducible Cre recombinase before undertaking extensive breeding experiments and exhaustive phenotyping. Curr. Protoc. Mouse Biol. 1:1-15. © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.|Université Catholique de Louvain, Life Science Institute, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Françoise
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Gofflot
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.|Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/INSERM/Université Louis Pasteur, Illkirch, France.
authors.forename: Olivia
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Wendling
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Chartoire
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.
authors.forename: Marie-Christine
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Birling
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.|Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Warot
authors.affiliation: Institut Clinique de la Souris (ICS), Illkirch, France.|Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Auwerx
keywords: conditional mutagenesis; functional genomic; inducible Cre; site-specific recombination