Production of transgenic mice and application to immunology and autoimmunity.

During the last decade, transgenic animal technology has assumed an increasingly important role as a critical tool in animal biology, biomedical research, and pharmaceutical development. This technology allows virtually any fragment of DNA large enough to contain an entire gene to become integrated into the germline of the recipient animal. The newly inserted DNA will be inherited like endogenous genes, and will be expressed as RNA and protein at tissue locations and abundance depending on regulatory elements attached to the coding DNA. It is possible to clone a particular gene, change a regulatory coding sequence, and reinsert the gene to determine the effect of the change on expression and function of the gene.