Welcome to the Transgenic Core Facility

Welcome to the Transgenic Core Facility
The Transgenic Core provides a technology resource to support the generation of transgenic mouse lines and knock-out mice. The Core Staff offers expertise, materials, training, consultation, access to equipment, and performs selected procedures on a fee for service basis. Ordering information and detailed description of services are available through this website. The Core serves Investigators affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin on a first come first serve basis. Time lines for projects vary according to the nature of the project and current workload of the Core. Information about fees is available from the Core Director. Successful and timely generation of transgenic and knock-out mice requires a concerted, collaborative effort of the Investigator and the Core staff in all stages of the experiment. Investigators planning on utilizing Core services are therefore encouraged to contact the staff already early in the planning stages of the experiment.

About the Core:
The Transgenic Core consists of a laboratory for procedures involving production and maintenance of transgenic mouse strains, a tissue culture facility for all procedures involving Embryonic Stem (ES) cells and gene targeting experiments, and a transgenic barrier holding facility. The Core is under the direction of Dr. Weiler, who has extensive experience in the production of genetically altered mice, and includes three additional staff skilled in various aspects of transgenic animal production and related procedures. The 400 sq. ft. laboratory is located in the Blood Research Institute, approximately 300 feet from the transgenic barrier facility, and is equipped to perform all procedures involving production and maintenance of transgenic or knock-out mice. Instrumentation includes an injection workstation (Nikon inverted phase contrast microscope with Hoffman modulation optics, temperature-controlled injection stage, air-suspended injection table, Eppendorf motor-driven injection system), microforge, needle puller, Nikon stereozoom microscope, surgical microscope, CO2-incubator, laminar flow hood for surgical procedures, and a cell fusion instrument for tetraploid embryo production. Additional workspace equipped for microsurgery is integrated in the transgenic barrier of the Animal Resource Center (ARC) at the MCW. Liquid nitrogen tanks and an automated cell freezer for cryopreservation of fertilized oocytes are available as shared instrumentation through the Transgenic Core. Over the past three years, the Core has successfully performed 24 different gene targeting experiments, produced more than 14 germline-competent ES cell aggregation chimeras and gene targeted mouse strains, generated transgenic animals via zygote micro-injection, and assisted in routine animal procedures such as re-derivation of mouse strains. All services (including gene targeting, blastocysts injections, and zygote microinjections) are available to MCW-associated Investigators on a fee-for-service basis. Recent references documenting Core expertise are given below.

Recent references documenting Core expertise:
Lu J, Chang P, Richardson JA, Gan L, Weiler H, Olson EN :The basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor capsulin controls spleen organogenesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A (2000) 97:9525-9530.

Roong Zhao, Scott Fahs, Hartmut Weiler, Stephen Duncan: An efficient method to successively introduce transgenes into a given genomic locus in the mouse. BMC Developmental Biology 2001, 1:10

Berend Isermann, Sara B. Hendrickson, Mark Zogg, Mark Wing, Marjorie Cummiskey, Yaz Y. Kisanuki, Masashi Yanagisawa, and Hartmut Weiler: Endothelium-specific loss of murine thrombomodulin disrupts the protein C anticoagulant pathway and causes juvenile-onset thrombosis . J.Clin.Invest. (2001) 108: 537ñ546.

Joseph M. Miano, Chad M. Kitchen, Jiyuan Chen, Kathleen M. Maltby, Louise A. Kelly, Hartmut Weiler, Ralf Krahe, Linda K. Ashworth, and Emilio Garcia: Expression of human smooth muscle calponin in transgenic mice revealed with a bacterial artificial chromosome. . Am .J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. (2002) 282: H1793-H1803.

BACK TO TOP