Transgenic mice: beyond the knockout

Transgenic mice have had a tremendous impact on biomedical research. Most researchers are familiar with transgenic mice that carry Cre recombinase (Cre) and how they are used to create conditional knockouts. However, some researchers are less familiar with many of the other types of transgenic mice and their applications. For example, transgenic mice can be used to study biochemical and molecular pathways in primary cultures and cell suspensions derived from transgenic mice, cell-cell interactions using multiple fluorescent proteins in the same mouse, and the cell cycle in real time and in the whole animal, and they can be used to perform deep tissue imaging in the whole animal, follow cell lineage during development and disease, and isolate large quantities of a pure cell type directly from organs. These novel transgenic mice and their applications provide the means for studying of molecular and biochemical events in the whole animal that was previously limited to cell cultures. In conclusion, transgenic mice are not just for generating knockouts.