NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research

 

Cre-Drivers for the Mouse Nervous System (web site coming soon)
A Blueprint-Funded Resource

• Supports the design, creation, and characterization of Cre-recombinase-expressing (“Cre-Driver”) mouse lines on the C57B1/6 background, which can be used to drive expression of reporter genes and conditional-ready alleles in the mouse nervous system.
• Through cooperative agreements with three labs, 100 or more novel recombinase-expressing lines will become available in the next several years along with a recombinase-expression profile for each line.
• The principal investigators are Ron Davis at Baylor College of Medicine, Josh Huang at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Uli Mueller at Scripps Research Institute.

• An ongoing contract to map gene expression in the mouse nervous system by generating transgenic mice that carry a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) harboring the gene of interest and an EGFP reporter (principal investigator: Nathaniel Heintz at the Rockefeller University).
• GENSAT also generates BAC Cre-driver lines to serve as tools for cell-specific genetic manipulations in the nervous system (co-principal investigator: Charles Gerfen at NIMH).
• Blueprint funds support the deposition of the transgenic BAC EGFP and BAC Cre-driver lines into MMRRCs.
• Related sites: NCBI GENSAT Database, St. Jude Brain Gene Expression Map

• With primary support from NCRR, these facilities provide central archiving, quality control, and distribution of mouse strains and mouse embryonic stem cell lines.
• Blueprint supplements were awarded to two existing MMRRC sites, the University of California at Davis and the University of Missouri/Harlan, to facilitate the distribution of mouse lines to the neuroscience community.

• A contract that gives NIH-funded researchers access to more than 250 lines of knock-out mice, and associated phenotypic data, from the private collections of Deltagen and Lexicon.

• Three facilities whose purpose is to generate mutant mice with neural and/or behavioral phenotypes, and distribute them to researchers.

• Maintains the Mutant Mouse Resource, a repository of mouse models carrying spontaneous genetic mutations, and the Induced Mutant Resource, a repository of genetically engineered and induced mutation mouse models.
• Also offers various mouse models of neurological diseases.

• Colonies of aged mice and rats available for research on aging and age-related diseases.
• Includes banks of flash-frozen tissue, as well as tissue arrays for histological studies across the rodent life span.

• Seeks to create a public bank of mouse embryonic stem cell lines that together contain a null mutation in every mouse gene.

• Maintains and distributes transgenic mouse models of Parkinson's disease that are not available from national commercial sources.

• Maintains and distributes rat models of the retinitis pigmentosa type of inherited retinal degeneration.

• Produces, characterizes, and distributes mutant mouse strains with defects in embryonic and postembryonic development.

Non-Human Primates

• House rhesus monkeys for use in non-invasive research, and store tissue samples from aged non-human primates.

• A network of eight facilities that foster the development of non-human primate models of human health and disease.

Other Animals

• Maintains over 1000 strains of the nematode C. elegans.

• Database and forum for information about C. elegans strains, genes, cell-level anatomy, and research methods.

• Maintains more than 20,000 fruit fly stocks, carrying all manner of mutations and genetic constructs.

• A comprehensive database of the Drosophila genome, with information about stock collections and fly genetic tools.

• Provides zebrafish lines, genetic tools, antibodies to zebrafish proteins, and assistance with fish rearing.