Transgenic Mouse

Transgenic mice are valuable tools to label selective neuronal or non-neuronal populations, modulate gene expression in these cells or manipulate activity of these cells for the study of neural circuits and brain function. The Allen Institute has launched a project to generate a variety of transgenic mouse lines, mainly using the Cre/lox system, to express fluorescent probes or neuronal activity manipulating tools in a variety of cell types in the brain. At the same time, utilizing Allen Institute's unique high-throughput capability, a pipeline is set up to characterize the ability in directing cell type specific expression in the brains of various transgenic mice generated by the Allen Institute as well as the broad scientific community. Through standardized, detailed, anatomical profiling of the transgene expression in the entire mouse brain, this dataset is intended to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the potential of each transgenic mouse line and help researchers choose the appropriate transgenic tools to study the function of different regions and/or cell types of the brain.

In this first transgenic data release, a set of new Cre-reporter lines generated at the Allen Institute that have stronger expression than other commonly used reporter lines are used to characterize approximately a dozen Cre-driver lines. The types of characterization data include digitized images (of sections sampling the entire brain) of colorimetric in situ hybridization (CISH), double fluorescent in situ hybridization (DFISH), native fluorescence of XFP (generic term for fluorescent proteins of different colors), and immunohistochemical (IHC) labeling of marker genes. Additional data, search tools and other features will be released in the future.

Additional information regarding data types and methodology, FAQ, availability of the transgenic mouse lines, people and organizations who have contributed to this project and the project application can be accessed under the More Projects tab.