What is Cre in mice?
The Cre/lox system is one of the most powerful and versatile tools developed for mouse genetics. It gives mouse researchers sophisticated control over the location and timing of gene expression. Cre/lox is usually used to make knockout alleles, but it can also be used to activate gene expression.
What Cre ER?
Cre recombinase is a tyrosine recombinase isolated from the bacteriophage P1 that catalyzes the cleavage and ligation of DNA at specific nucleotide recognition sites, loxP sites, via phosphoryl transfer (Hoess et al., 1990).
How does Flox Cre work?
How does it work? As alluded to above, the Cre recombinase catalyzes the site specific recombination event between two loxP sites, which can be located either on the same or on separate pieces of DNA. Both 13bp repeat sequences on a single loxP site are recognized and bound by a Cre protein, forming a dimer.
What are Cre driver mice?
Cre-driver lines: A special type of transgenic mouse As shown in Figure 2 below, different types of neurons, whether inhibitory, excitatory or other have specific proteins and therefore genes that would allow for the specific expression of the exogenous Cre-recombinase.
How are floxed mice generated?
Conditional mutant mice are obtained by crossing the floxed strain with a Cre transgenic line such that the target gene becomes inactivated in vivo within the expression domain of Cre.
Who invented Cre lox?
Nat L. Sternberg
The origins of this tool date to more than 30 years ago when Nat L. Sternberg discovered the recombinase, Cre, and its specific locus of crossover, lox, while studying the maintenance of bacteriophage P1 as a stable plasmid.
What is Cre used for?
Cre recombinase plays important roles in the life cycle of the P1 bacteriophage. Upon infection of a cell the Cre-loxP system is used to cause circularization of the P1 DNA. In addition to this Cre is also used to resolve dimeric lysogenic P1 DNA that forms during the cell division of the phage.
Where is Cre in a neuron?
Cre recombinase activity is expected in neurons of the cortex and hippocampus. Cre recombinase activity is expected in mesoderm as early as embryonic day 9.5, in mesodermal tissues such as branchial arches and somites, and in condensed mesenchyme-derived chondrocytes and osteoblasts.
What is Cre ERT2?
The Cre-ERT2 fusion protein consists of Cre recombinase fused to a triple mutant form of the human estrogen receptor which does not bind its natural ligand (17β-estradiol) at physiological concentrations but will bind the synthetic estrogen receptor ligands 4-hydroxytamoxifen (OHT or tamoxifen) and, with lesser …
What does Floxed mouse mean?
In genetics, floxing refers to the sandwiching of a DNA sequence (which is then said to be floxed) between two lox P sites. Therefore, Cre-lox system can be used in mice to manipulate gene expression in order to study human diseases and drug development.