Fluorescent transgenic mice suitable for multi-color aggregation chimera studies

Masato Ohtsuka, Hiromi Miura, Channabasavaiah B. Gurumurthy, Minoru Kimura, Hidetoshi Inoko, Shinichi Yoshimura, Masahiro Sato

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

We recently reported a novel method of mouse transgenesis called Pronuclear Injection-based Targeted Transgenisis (PITT) using which a series of fluorescent transgenic (Tg) mice lines were generated. These lines, unlike those generated using conventional random integration methods, express the transgenes faithfully and reproducibly generation after generation. Because of this superior nature, these lines are ideal for the generation of multicolored aggregation chimeras that can be used to study cell-cell interactions and lineage analyses in living embryos/ organs, where the transgenes can be detected and the clonal origin of a given cell population easily traced by its distinct fluorescence. In this study, to verify if Tg fluorescent mice generated through PITT were suitable for such applications, we sought to generate chimeric blastocysts and chimeric-Tg mice by aggregating two- or three-colored 8- cell embryos. Our analyses using these models led to the following observations. First, we noticed that cell mixing was infrequent during the stages of morula to early blastocyst. Second, chimeric fetuses obtained after aggregation of the two-colored 8-cell embryos exhibited uniform cell mixing. And third, in the organs of adult chimeric mice, the mode of cell distribution could be either clonal or polyclonal, as previously pointed out by others. Implications of our novel and improved Tg-chimeric mice approach for clonal cell lineage and developmental studies are discussed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)251-260
Number of pages10
JournalCell and Tissue Research
Volume350
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2012

Keywords

  • Aggregation chimera
  • Clonality
  • Fluorescent mouse
  • Mice
  • Preimplantation embryos

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Pathology and Forensic Medicine
  • Histology
  • Cell Biology

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