Final Flashcards
What are 3 things to consider when deciding on a model organism to use for a particular study?
Brood size, generation time, cost of maintenance
Name 3 things that make mice a good model for human disease?
Inexpensive, small and easy to handle, similar genetics to humans
Mice live ___ years and reach sexual maturity and _____ of age.
1-3 years
4 weeks
Female mice are sexually receptive (or _____) every _____.
Estrous
4-5 days
Mouse litters can contain _____ pups.
4-10
Mice contain ___ autosomes.
Drosophila contain ___ autosomes.
Humans contain ____ autosomes.
19
3
23
Mice chromosomes are _____ with the exception of which chromosome? Human chromosomes tend to be ______.
Acrocentric. Y chromosome. Metacentric
Define synteny.
Define shared synteny.
Physical co-localization of genetic loci.
Conserved genetic context (arrangement of genes and regulatory elements) of particular loci between 2 organisms.
__% of mouse and human genome can be aligned to regions of shared synteny. Approximately how many human genes have mouse homologues? Approximately what percent of human genes have drosophila homologues?
Over 90%
17,100 (70%)
75%
What are 3 major advantages to using inbred mouse strains?
- Yields homogeneous (isogenic) genetic background
- Inbred mice aren’t sterile like other mammals tend to be
- They contain reduced phenotypic variation (valuable for studying disease causation)
Male mice are mated with many females to ________.
Maximize the number of progeny. Also males produce more germ cells, so you increase the chances that a sperm will contain your transgene or modification of interest.
The parental generation is called ____ in:
Mice?
Drosophila?
P0
P1
What is the purpose of backcrossing?
To eliminate other variants and ensure that phenotype is due to the introduced genetic change, and nothing else.
List 4 scenarios where backcrossing may be needed?
- If F1 is a chimera
- If P0 are from different strains
- If the allele is generated by random mutagenesis
- To eliminate off-target effects
How many generations of backcrossing are needed to make a true congenic strain?
10
What does it mean to be congenic?
An inbred strain of mouse that contains a small genetic region (ideally a single gene) from another strain, but which is otherwise identical to the original inbred strain
Define transgene.
Genetic material transferred naturally or through a genetic engineering technique from one organism to another.
What are the basic components of a mouse transgene?
- Promoter
- Intron
- 5’ UTR
- Gene of interest lacking introns (cDNA)
- 3’UTR/PolyA
- Enhancer
Why include an intron in a transgene?
Has been shown to significantly increase the expression of the transgene and possibly the efficiency of RNA splicing
What is required to target a transgene to a specific location within the genome?
5’ and 3’ homology arms
What is the most commonly used method of random mutagenesis in mice?
Pronuclear injection
What are the 6 steps involved in pronuclear injection?
- Fertilized mouse eggs are collected at the single cell stage
- Linearized transgene is injected into either male or female pronucleus
- Homologous recombination between transgene and mouse genome occurs
- Injected egg is transferred to a pseudo pregnant mouse
- Transgeneic (founder) mice are born that have transgene integrated randomly into their genome
- Genotype founders
What are the steps involved in blastocyst injection of ESCs?
- ESCs are derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst
- ESCs are grown in 2D cell culture
- ESCs are transfected with transgene that contains a positive selection marker
- ESCs undergo positive selection, clonal expansion, and screening methods to detect the clones that contain the desired site-specific recombination
- The successful transgenic ESC clones are microinjected into a donor mouse blastocyst
- Injected blastocysts are transferred to a pseudo pregnant mouse
- Transgenic (chimera) mice are born that contain both injected ESCs and donor mouse cells
- Breed chimeras to WT parental mouse strain to get offspring that are heterozygous for the transgene
- Backcross heterozygotes to parental strain
Pronuclear injection is a method used to study _____ muations while blastocyst inection of ESCs is used to study _____ mutations.
Gain of function
Loss of function
What is the difference between founder and chimera mice?
Founders generated through pronuclear injection and contain transgene in all cells
Chimeras are generated through blastocyst injection of ESCs and contain a mix of cells with transgene and from donor.
What are the pros and cons of blastocyst injection of ESCs versus CRISPR/Cas9?
Blastocyst injection Pro: Fewer off target effects
Blastocyst injection Con: Backcrossing is necessary, and this method is more costly/time ineffective, mutation might not allow for mouse development, the ES cells may not contribute to sperm development, mES lines are prone to chomosome loss/gain/robertsonian translocations
CRISPR Pro: No backcrossing necessary, new mutations can be easily added to existing mutant strains, and this is more cost/time effective.
CRISPR Con: More off-target effects
What is the ROSA26 locus?
A targetable locus in mice used to create a knock-in that allows for constitutive and ubiquitous expression of a transgene from intron 1 of this locus
Define reporter gene. What can they be inserted?
A gene that enables the detection or measurement of gene expression.
Downstream of promoter to measure promoter activity (but this may knockout endogenous gene)
OR
Downstream of gene, under its own IRES to measure both gene and promoter
OR
Fused to endogenous gene to measure localization of protein
What is the significance of using reporter mice?
Allows for the study of the transcriptional activity of a promoter or for the monitoring of protein localization or trafficking in vivo.
What is the difference between a knock down and a knock out?
Knock down: gene expression is reduced at the RNA or protein level (RNAi)
Knockout: gene expression eliminated at the nucleotide level (CRISPR)
LoxP sites are __ bp sequences that consist of _____bp____ sequences that flank a ___bp__ sequence.
34
two 13-bp inverse repeat
8-bp core
If LoxP sites are in the same direction, what happens to the sequence in the middle?
It is excised.
What are the advantages (@) and disadvantages (7) of CreLoxP
Advantages: Works in almost any cell type, can be used in conjunction with other systems (i.e. tet inducible Cre), contains only 2 major components.
Disadvantages: Off target tissue activity, leaky expression, irreversible, potential phenotypes due to cre expression alone, numerous steps necessary for construct and mouse strain construction, can stop working/will silence over generations, recombination efficiency of LoxP sites can be affected by postition and distance between 2 sites leading to mosaicism
What components are necessary for Tet on/off systems?
- Tetracycline responsive element (TRE) that is 7 repeats of 19bp tet operator sequences
- Tetracycline transactivator/reverse transactivator
- Tetracycline or a tet derivative (doxycycline)
What happens when tetracycline is added in a tetOFF system? How about a tetON system?
TetOFF: gene is not expressed in presence of tet, since tet binds to tTA
TetON: gene is expressed in presence of tet since tet binds to rtTA and allows it to bind and activate gene expression
What are the advantages and disadvantages of TetOn/Off systems?
Advantages: Reversible, gives you more temporal control than CreLoxP
Disadvantages: Can yield leaky expression, tet can be toxic at high levels, or administration at the wrong time during development.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of auxin inducible degron systems?
Advantages: reversible, fast
Disadvantages: Not in use for mouse models, you need to create an AUD protein
What components are necessary for the auxin inducible degron system?
- Ter1 (transport inhibitor response 1) - promotes interaction between E3 ubiquitin ligase and auxin
- E3 ligase
- Auxin - a plant hormone that can mediate the interaction of Ter1 and the auxin inducible degron
- An auxin inducible degron tagged to protein you want to degrade.
CreLoxP works on ____,
TetOn/Off works on ____,
Auxin inducible degron systems work on ___.
DNA
RNA
Protein
What is ENU and how does it act as a mutagen?
N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea is an alkylating agent that transfers its ethyl group to one of a number of reactive sites on DNA nucleotides, including the O6of guanine to produce O6-ethylGuanine (O-eG). This causes a CG to AT transition that is passed on after spermatogenesis.
What are E-males?
C57BL/6 male mice that have been treated with ENU.
What happens after E-male exposure to ENU?
They recover their fertility for 12 weeks before being mated to C57BL/6 or C3H females.
What is the general mating scheme for ENU mutagenesis?
E-male mated to C57BL/6 or C3H female.
G1s are heterozygous for unique ENU-induced mutations. If the mutation is dominant, it will show up in G1.
If you’re looking for a recessive mutation, mate G1 male with a C57BL/6 or C3H female to yield heterozygoys and WT G2. Cross female G2s with a G1 male before screening.
If looking for a recessive mutation during ENU mutagenesis, what is the frequency of a given mutation at the G3 stage? How many G3s will be necessary to ensure that a mutant is identified?
1 in 8.
16-36.
In what scenario would you cross the C57BL/6 E-male with a C3H female instead of a C57BL/6 female?
If you want to introduce variation early or if you want to map mutations.
How does gene mapping woth C3H mice work?
Outcross a G3 mouse with a C57BL/6 background that is homozygous for your mutation with a C3H mouse to yield heterozygous G4 mice. Cross these with the affected G3 animals (or intercross the hets) to identify G5 mice with and without the phenotype of interest and genotype these mice using STRs or SNPs which allows determination of linkage of the mutation with a particular marker.
Or, if the G3s were already crossed to C3H previously, mapping data can be obtained directly from G3 mice.
ENU mutagenesis produces ____ mutations which allows for the discovery of what types of mutant alleles?
Point mutations.
Hypomorphic or separation of function (novel) alleles.
ENU mutagenesis is particularily useful for generating ____ alleles of genes involved in ______.
Hypomorphic
Development
How do you generate a pseudopregnant mouse?
Mate her to a vasectomized male.
What is the fastest method of creating transgenic mice? How does this work?
Testis electroporation
Linearized DNA is injected directly into testis and electroporation (pulses of high voltage electric shocks) introduces the DNA into germ cells. Progeny can be screened via GFP and PCR genotyping.
What are the advantages (6) and disadvantages (4) of transgene integration?
Advantages: fast, easy, high-throughput, can introduce foreign genes, can screen for dominant negative alleles, ad can test promoters for expression.
Disadvantages: random integration, multiple integrations, disruption of critical regions of the genome, and silencing of transgene due to region of integration.
What are the 3 main features of a targetting vector?
5’ homology arm and 3’ homology arms flanking a positive selection gene (i.e. NEOr), all upstream of a negative selection gene (i.e. HSV-ik)
What is the purpose of negative selection in gene targetting of ESCs? Positive?
To select against cells that have integrated the transgene randomly.
To select for cells that were transformed.
What steps you would take to verify mESCs cells prior to injecting mESCs into a recipient blastocyst (6).
- Select for Neo resistance and absence of HSV-tk expression
- Karyotyping to look for structural abnormalities
- PCR verification of 5’ and 3’ arms
- Sequence – Whole genome, relevant region
- Southern Blot (use Neo as radioactive probe)
- Look at cellular morphology – if abnormal, they have differentiated
p53 mutants are susceptible to _______.
Spontaneous tumors, especially upon carcinogen treatment
What’s the major disadvantage of a knockout mouse? How can this be somewhat fixed (give 2)?
Loss of gene function can often result in lethality.
If a heterzygote results in haploinsufficiency OR create a conditional knockout allele.
What components are required for a FRT/Cre-LoxP system?
- Cre (under tissue/cell specific promoter)
- LoxP flanking gene of interest
- 5’ and 3’ homology arms
- Neo resistance cassette
- LacZ reporter
- FRT (flp recombinase sites) flanking LacZ
- FLP
What is the purpose of the knockout first/knokout ready alleles?
Knockout first alleles (tm1a) have the gene of interest non-functional since LacZ and Neo are blocking expression. Once flp recombinase is added, LacZ and Neo are removed to generate a knockout ready allele (tm1c) that is flanked by lox P sites, so that a particular exon or part of the gene of interest can be removed with Cre recombinase.
Cre that is inserted downstream of Cfd9 will be expressed in what tissue/cell type?
In oocytes during maturation
ERt2-Cre transgenes is a fusion between cre recombinase and _____. This resulting protein is confined to the ____ (cellular location). In the presence of _____, what happens to CreER?
Estrogen receptor.
Cytoplasm.
Tamoxafin
Translocated to nucleus and can act on LoxP sites
What things are needed to generate CRISPR-Cas9 mice?
- Cas9 protein
- crRNA + tracrRNA (gRNA)
- ssODN (oligodeoxynucleotides) repair template/ insertion template.
What is a coisogenic strain?
What is a congenic strain?
What is a consomic strain?
What is an inbread strain?
A strain that differs from an established inbred strain by a mutation at only one locus
A strain formed by backcrossing to an inbred parental strain for 10 or more generations while maintaining heterozygosity at a selected locus.
A strain in which one chromosome has been replaced with the homologous chromosome from another strain.
A strain that has been maintained by sibling (sister x brother) matings for 20 or more consecutive generation
How do you superovulate a mouse?
Inject mouse with equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG), then inject with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and harvest after 12-14 hours
What are SMC protein complexes?
Structural Maintenance of Chromsomes (SMC) - cohesion is an example of one - that functions in: DNA replication DNA damage repair Chromosome condensation Chromosome segregation Transcription
What are SMCopathies?
Affects ~ 1 in 10,000 births Defined by: Microcephaly Cognitive retardation Growth retardation Organ defects Cancer predisposition
What does a gene trap allele contain?
- A promoterless reporter gene and/or selectable genetic marker (beta-geo)
- An upstream 3’ splice site acceptor
- A downstream transcriptional termination sequence (polyA).
- A negative selection marker (HSVik)
What is the function of a gene trap, and list 2 ways in which this is useful.
GT is inserted into an intron of a GOI and the cassette is transcribed from the endogenous promoter of that gene in the form of a fusion transcript in which the exon(s) upstream of the insertion site is spliced in frame to the reporter/selectable marker gene. Transcription is terminated prematurely at the inserted polyadenylation site so that the fusion transcript encodes a truncated version of the cellular protein and the reporter/selectable marker.
Gene traps simultaneously inactivate and report the expression of the trapped gene at the insertion site, and provide a DNA tag for the rapid identification of the disrupted gene.
What is Beta-geo? What is its major disadvantage? How can this be mitigated?
β-galactosidase and Neomycin resistance fusion protein
This is a selection, so expression of b-geo is dependent on expression of protein X (which makes it difficult to select)
Tag Neo (the selection part) to its own constitutive promoter.
What are 6 advantages to using drosophila as model organisms?
- Small - easily maintained and handled
- Short life cycle
- Numerous offspring
- Cheap
- Simple genome
- few legal and ethical restrictions
A normal fruit fly lives _____ days. Their life cycle is _____ dependent.
40-50 days
Temperature
How many days does it take a fertilized embryo to become a normal fly at 25 degrees? How about at 18 degrees?
10
Twice as long