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Perspective
1 Department of Internal Medicine, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
2 Genetics Graduate Program, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
3 Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
4 Center on Functional Genomics of Hypertension, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
Tissue-specific knockouts generated through Cre-loxP recombination have become an important tool to manipulate the mouse genome. Normally, two successive rounds of breeding are performed to generate mice carrying two floxed target-gene alleles and a transgene expressing Cre-recombinase tissue-specifically. We show herein that two promoters commonly used to generate endothelium-specific (Tie2) and smooth muscle-specific [smooth muscle myosin heavy chain (Smmhc)] knockout mice exhibit activity in the female and male germ lines, respectively. This can result in the inheritance of a null allele in the second generation that is not tissue specific. Careful experimental design is required therefore to ensure that tissue-specific knockouts are indeed tissue specific and that appropriate controls are used to compare strains.
Cre-loxP; knockout; conditional; vascular; endothelium; smooth muscle myosin heavy chain
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