Cre/loxP Strategies

Synonyms

Conditional gene knockout; genome engineering; site‐specific recombination

Definition

Accurate animal models of human disease are invaluable both in understanding the genetic contribution to disease and in the rigorous evaluation of therapeutic treatments. A remarkably useful molecular tool for making and inducing precisely designed mutational alterations in the genome in a tissue‐specific manner is the site‐specific DNA recombinase called Cre. The Cre recombinase from Escherichia coli bacteriophage P1 efficiently catalyzes conservative site‐specific DNA recombination at the 34‐bp nucleotide loxP sequence in the P1 genome. The finding that Cre can also catalyze efficient DNA recombination in higher eukaryotic cells led to the development of site‐specific DNA recombination as an important research tool for genetic and chromosome engineering in gene‐modified animals (1). A particularly powerful strategy is the design of conditional mutations by targeted excision of a desired...