Unlock the power of the Cre/lox system for tissue-specific, inducible knockouts and advanced gene tracking in mouse models. Learn practical breeding schemes to simplify complexity, refine gene expression control, and avoid lethal phenotypes.

May 19, 2006 · To use Cre-lox technology, an investigator has to produce a Cre-lox mouse, typically by breeding a Cre mouse to a loxP mouse. A Cre mouse contains a Cre recombinase transgene under the direction of a tissue-specific promoter; a loxP mouse contains two loxP sites that flank a genomic segment of interest, the "floxed" locus. Typically, Cre and loxP mice are produced by using transgenic ...

Jan 21, 2025 · Cre-lox technology initially represented the pinnacle of sophistication; but as it drove scientific breakthroughs and advanced understanding, more refined questions arose, creating the need for an even more sophisticated tool. Cre-lox technology works by defining a cell population by a single gene.

In a previous post I discussed breeding Cre/lox mice to generate tissue-specific and inducible conditional knockout mouse strains. I would now like to continue the discussion of breeding Cre/lox mice and focus on two new issues: using Cre/lox mice to turn on or off transgenes, and using Cre reporter strains.

Research Tools: Cre-Lox and More FAQ. Find answers to questions like: How do Cre-Lox and Tet-on / Tet-off systems work? Does my mouse need to be homozygous for cre? What is the difference between cre and iCre? Where is cre expressed in this strain? Should I breed the male or the female with cre?

The Cre-lox system is one of the most revolutionary tools in the geneticist's toolbox. You don't have to be a user or developer of cre or floxed mice to appreciate the impact that cre-lox technology has had on biomedical research and genetic engineering.

Conditional mutagenesis using the Cre-lox system is not the only strategy available to spatiotemporally regulate gene expression in mouse models of human diseases.

In a recently published paper (Heffner, et al. 2013) researchers at The Jackson Laboratory have found that many strains expressing Cre have phenotypes that were not obvious when these strains were created. Some of these phenotypes, including unexpected expression patterns, may seriously complicate the interpretation of your experiments.

The Cre/lox system has become the cornerstone of modern mouse genetics because it enables sophisticated control over the timing and location of gene expression. This is the first in a series of posts that looks at some finer points that often go overlooked in …

With tissue-specific Cre-lox KO models, the genotype of the mice that you generally want to evaluate is homozygous for your floxed allele (fl/fl) and positive for Cre (cre+). (Typically, only one copy of the cre transgene is required for efficient recombination.) As we have discussed in a previous blog post, two rounds of breeding are necessary to produce such mice, even if …