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Novel reporter and deleter mouse strains generated using VCre/VloxP and SCre/SloxP systems, and their system specificity in mice

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Abstract

DNA site-specific recombination by Cre/loxP is a powerful tool for gene manipulation in experimental animals. VCre/VloxP and SCre/SloxP are novel site-specific recombination systems, consisting of a recombinase and its specific recognition sequences, which function in a manner similar to Cre/loxP. Previous reports using Escherichia coli and Oryzias latipes demonstrated the existence of stringent specificity between each recombinase and its target sites; VCre/VloxP, SCre/SloxP, and Cre/loxP have no cross-reactivity with each other. In this study, we established four novel knock-in (KI) mouse strains in which VloxP-EGFP, SloxP-tdTomato, CAG-VCre, and CAG-SCre genes were inserted into the ROSA26 locus. VloxP-EGFP and SloxP-tdTomato KI mice were reporter mice carrying EGFP or tdTomato genes posterior to the stop codon, which was floxed by VloxP or SloxP fragments, respectively. CAG-VCre and CAG-SCre KI mice carried VCre or SCre genes that were expressed ubiquitously. These two reporter mice were crossed with three different deleter mice, CAG-VCre KI, CAG-SCre KI, and Cre-expressing transgenic mice. Through these matings, we found that VCre/VloxP and SCre/SloxP systems were functional in mice similar to Cre/loxP, and that the recombinases showed tight specificity for their recognition sequences. Our results suggest that these novel recombination systems allow highly sophisticated genome manipulations and will be useful for tracing the fates of multiple cell lineages or elucidating complex spatiotemporal regulations of gene expression.

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Funding

This study was supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (Specially Designated Research Promotion), JP24310143 (M.N.) and JP16K07208 (M.N.).

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Correspondence to Mamoru Ito.

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The authors have no conflict of interests to declare.

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All applicable international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals were followed. All animal experiments were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA, No. S150430-03) and performed in accordance with guidance set forth by the CIEA. This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

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Yoshimura, Y., Ida-Tanaka, M., Hiramaki, T. et al. Novel reporter and deleter mouse strains generated using VCre/VloxP and SCre/SloxP systems, and their system specificity in mice. Transgenic Res 27, 193–201 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-018-0067-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-018-0067-0

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