A pink mouse reports the switch from red to green fluorescence upon Cre-mediated recombination

Transgenic mouse model exhibiting weak red fluorescence before and strong green fluorescenceafter Cre/loxP-mediated recombination

The Cre/loxP system is an indispensable tool for temporal and spatial control of gene function in mice. Many mice that express Cre and carry loxP sites in their genomes have been bred for functional analysis of various genes in vivo. Also, several reporter mice have been generated for monitoring of recombination by the Cre/loxP system. We have developed a Cre reporter gene with DsRed1 and Venus that exhibits a strong red fluorescence before and a strong green fluorescence after Cre/loxP-mediated recombination in experiments using NIH3T3 cells. However, a transgenic mouse introduced with the same reporter gene exhibits a weak red fluorescence before and a strong green fluorescence after Cre/loxP-mediated recombination. This property manifested ubiquitously in this mouse model and was maintained stably in mouse-derived fibroblasts. Use of the mouse model exhibiting the stronger red fluorescence might result in confusion of the Cre-dependent signal with false signals, because the Venus signal includes some fluorescence in the red region of the spectrum and the DsRed1 signal includes some fluorescence in the green region. However, we fortuitously obtained reporter mice that exhibit a weaker red fluorescence before Cre/loxP-mediated recombination. The use of this mouse model would decrease concern regarding errors in the identification of signals and should increase certainty in the detection of Cre activity in vivo.

Conditional Mutagenesis in Oligodendrocyte Lineage Cells

Cell-type-specific gene targeting with the Cre/loxP system has become an indispensable technique in experimental neuroscience, particularly for the study of late-born glial cells that make myelin. A plethora of conditional mutants and Cre-expressing mouse lines is now available to the research community that allows laboratories to readily engage in in vivo analyses of oligodendrocytes and their precursor cells. This chapter summarizes concepts and strategies in targeting myelinating glial cells in mice for mutagenesis or imaging, and provides an overview of the most important Cre driver lines successfully used in this rapidly growing field.

Finding degrees of separation: experimental approaches for astroglial and oligodendroglial cell isolation and genetic targeting

The study of CNS glial cell function requires experimental methods to detect, purify, and manipulate each cell population with fidelity and specificity. With the identification and cloning of cell- and stage-specific markers, glial cell analysis techniques have grown beyond physical methods of tissue dissociation and cell culture, and become highly specific with immunoselection of cell cultures in vitro and genetic targeting in vivo. The unique plasticity of glial cells offers the potential for cell replacement therapies in neurological disease that utilize neural cells derived from transplanted neural stem and progenitor cells. In this mini-review, we outline general physical and genetic approaches for macroglial cell generation. We summarize cell culture methods to obtain astrocytes and oligodendrocytes and their precursors, from developing and adult tissue, as well as approaches to obtain human neural progenitor cells through the establishment of stem cells. We discuss popular targeting rodent strains designed for cell-specific detection, selection and manipulation of neuroglial cell progenitors and their committed progeny. Based on shared markers between astrocytes and stem cells, we discuss genetically modified mouse strains with overlapping expression, and highlight SOX-expressing strains available for targeting of stem and progenitor cell populations. We also include recently established mouse strains for detection, and tag-assisted RNA and miRNA analysis. This discussion aims to provide a brief overview of the rapidly expanding collection of experimental approaches and genetic resources for the isolation and targeting of macroglial cells, their sources, progeny and gene products to facilitate our understanding of their properties and potential application in pathology.

Metabolic pitfalls of CNS Cre-based technology

Nestin-Cre mice have a significant metabolic phenotype that is hard to discern from current literature. Indeed, the Cre-lox system has numerous problems that can affect physiological parameters, and these are missed when the correct control strains are not used. Despite the increasing use of the Cre-lox system, these issues were not visible to the scientific community previously and may have affected published work. This makes it important to highlight the issues and raise awareness of the pitfalls of the Cre-lox system. Therefore, this perspective will discuss the impact of CNS and peripheral "off-target" Cre recombination on metabolic systems and describe the development of new approaches to obviate the difficulties.

Novel ROSA26 Cre-reporter knock-in C57BL/6N mice exhibiting green emission before and red emission after Cre-mediated recombination

The Cre/loxP system is a strategy for controlling temporal and/or spatial gene expression through genome alteration in mice. As successful Cre/loxP genome alteration depends on Cre-driver mice, Cre-reporter mice are essential for validation of Cre gene expression in vivo. In most Cre-reporter mouse strains, although the presence of reporter product indicates the expression of Cre recombinase, it has remained unclear whether a lack of reporter signal indicates either no Cre recombinase expression or insufficient reporter gene promoter activity. We produced a novel ROSA26 knock-in Cre-reporter C57BL/6N strain exhibiting green emission before and red after Cre-mediated recombination, designated as strain R26GRR. Ubiquitous green fluorescence and no red fluorescence were observed in R26GRR mice. To investigate the activation of tdsRed, EGFP-excised R26GRR, R26RR, mice were produced through the crossing of C57BL/6N mice with R26GRR/Ayu1-Cre F1 mice. R26RR mice showed extraordinarily strong red fluorescence in almost all tissues examined, suggesting ubiquitous activation of the second reporter in all tissues after Cre/loxP recombination. Moreover, endothelial cell lineage and pancreatic islet-specific expression of red fluorescence were detected in R26GRR/Tie2-Cre F1 mice and R26GRR /Ins1-Cre F1 mice, respectively. These results indicated that R26GRR mice are a useful novel Cre-reporter mouse strain. In addition, R26GRR mice with a pure C57BL/6N background represent a valuable source of green-to-red photoconvertible cells following Cre/loxP recombination for application in transplantation studies. The R26GRR mouse strain will be available from RIKEN BioResource Center (http://www.brc.riken.jp/lab/animal/en/).