NEI Central Transgenic Facility

National Eye Institute

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

The NEI Central Transgenic Animal Facility is a research support facility for all NEI intramural researchers requiring the use of transgenic mice in their research programs. We have also begun supporting researchers from NIDCD. We are currently providing transgenic animal support to researchers from many laboratories/branches in the NEI (LI, LMDB, LMOD, LRCMB, OGVFB, OSD, LMB[NIDCD]). Our program has handled approximately 335 DNA constructs, which are at various stages of completion. Researchers, using molecular biology techniques to study the eye, submit DNA constructs to our section for production of transgenic mice. We create transgenic mice by standard procedures, then biopsy and perform DNA analysis on the mice which are born from these procedures to identify transgene positive mice. At the researchers' request, we mate positive transgenic mice, wean litters, biopsy and analyze DNA from successive generations of transgenic mice, provide the transgenic animals to researchers for use in their experiments, and cryopreserve and bank embryos from important mouse lines (both transgenic and naturally occurring) for long term storage. For generating gene knockout mice, we perform ES cell injections into blastocysts. We also help researchers design transgenic projects and transgene/knockout vectors on a collaborative basis. This year we have: * accepted 15 new constructs for transgenic mouse production; * generated 141 transgenic founder mice; * set up 352 matings of transgenic mice; * weaned, tagged and tail biopsied 2,581 mice; * isolated DNA from 4,780 samples; * performed 5,467 PCR analyses; * cryopreserved 3,500 mouse embryos; * generated chimeric mice from 2 ES cell lines.