Overview: engineering transgenic constructs and mice.

Cell biology research encompasses everything from single cells to whole animals. Recent discoveries concerning particular gene functions can be applied to the whole animal for understanding genotype-phenotype relationships underlying disease mechanisms. For this reason, genetically manipulated mouse models are now considered essential to correctly understand disease processes in whole animals. This unit reviews the basic mouse technologies used to generate conventional transgenic mice, which represent a gain-of-function approach. First, an overview of transgenic construct design is presented. This unit then explains basic strategies for the identification and establishment of independent transgenic mouse lines, followed by comments on historical and emerging techniques. It then describes typical problems that are encountered when researchers start to generate transgenic mice. Copyright 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.