Repository for Knockout Mice Established in California

A sum of US$4.8 million has been earmarked for the establishment and support of a repository for biologic materials obtained from genetically engineered "knockout” mice. This award is the final component of a more than $50 million initiative to increase the availability of genetically altered mice and related materials.

Knockout mice are lines of mice in which specific genes have been completely disrupted, or knocked out. They are useful tools that allow researchers to study human conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. To facilitate research involving knockout mice the [U.S.] National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA) has awarded a large grant to the University of California, Davis (USA) and the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (Oakland, CA, USA) to jointly maintain and make available to the research community about 8,500 types of knockout mice and related products. The repository will archive, maintain, and distribute embryonic stem cell clones, live mouse lines, frozen embryos and sperm, and vectors.

"This repository will enable many more researchers to access knockout mice, which are valuable models of human disease,” said Dr. Colin Fletcher, a program director at the [U.S.] National Human Genome Research Institute, which is the administrative lead for Knockout Mouse Project. "Establishing this final component of the Knockout Mouse Project is an important milestone in progressing toward our goal of making a comprehensive resource of knockout mutations in the mouse genome publicly available to the research community.”


Related Links:
[U.S.] National Institutes of Health
University of California, Davis
Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute