Simple and Highly Efficient in vivo Method for Genome-wide Mutagenesis in Mice

The present invention provides a practical Cre/loxP-based mutagenesis strategy to systematically mutate coding sequence and/or the vast non-genic region of the mouse genome for large-scale functional genomic analysis of the mouse. It was found that under proper guidance, Cre/loxP site-specific recombination could generate large germline deletions and duplications, simply by breeding. Moreover, the same breeding method was able to generate germline translocations between non-homologous chromosomes at reasonable frequencies as well. By incorporating a transposon to randomly insert loxP sites throughout the mouse genome, this invention presents a simple and comprehensive method for generating genome-wide insertions, deletions, and duplications in mice.

Benefits
This invention can be used to
1. Examine the function of the whole mouse genome, including not only 2.5% of gene-coding regions, but 97.5% non-coding regions.
2. Establish mouse models for various human diseases.
3. Perform large-scale screens for specific phenotypes, such as tumors in a sensitized mouse genetic background. This approach may find tumor suppressors and enhancers without any bias.
In addition, this method can be easily extended to other species such as chickens, rats, which currently do not have simple and effective mutagenesis strategy available.

Stage of Development
A provisional patent application has been requested.
This technology is available for licensing under either exclusive or non-exclusive terms.

Additional Info
*http://capecchi.genetics.utah.edu/index.html

Inventor(s): Mario Capecchi, Sen Wu

Type of Offer: Licensing



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