Labeling of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells in novel activatable EGFP reporter mice

Derek S. Gilchrist, Jan Ure, Lilian Hook, Alexander Medvinsky*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Conditional activation and inactivation of genes using the Cre/loxP recombination system is a powerful tool for the analysis of gene function and for tracking cell fate. Here we report a novel silent EGFP reporter mouse line generated by enhancer trap technology using embryonic stem (ES) cells. Following transfection with the silent EGFP reporter construct, positive ES cell clones were treated with Cre recombinase. These "activated clones" were then further selected on the basis of ubiquitous EGFP expression during in vitro differentiation. The parental "silent" clones were then used for generating mice. Upon Cre-mediated activation in ovo tissues tested from these mice express EGFP. Long-term, strong and sustainable expression of EGFP is observed in most myeloid and lymphoid cells. As shown by in vivo transplantation assays, the majority of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and spleen colony-forming units (CFU-S) reside within the EGFP positive fraction. Most in vitro colony-forming units (CFU-Cs) isolated from bone marrow also express EGFP. Thus, these reporter mice are useful for the analysis of Cre-mediated recombination in HSCs and hematopoietic progenitor cells. This, in combination with the high accessibility of the loxp sites, makes these mice a valuable tool for testing cell/tissue-specific Cre-expressing mice.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)168-176
Number of pages9
Journalgenesis: The Journal of Genetics and Development
Volume36
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 10 Jul 2003

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • cre-recombinase
  • hematopoietic stem
  • reporter mice
  • progenitor cells

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