The Jackson Laboratory to Play a Key Role in the Knockout Mouse Project
JAX® NOTES Issue 504, Winter 2006
In early September, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) formally launched its Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP). The goal of the project is to build a comprehensive and publicly available resource of approximately 20,000 knockout mouse strains, each with a mutation completely disrupting a different gene among the estimated 20,000 in the mouse genome. To date, researchers around the world have produced mouse knockouts for about 5,000 of the 20,000 genes. The Jackson Laboratory will play a major role in the project. It was awarded a five-year $2.5 million cooperative agreement to establish KOMP's Data Coordination Center. Under the leadership of Dr. Martin Ringwald, the Center will collect information allowing researchers to track the scheduling and progress of knockout production. The Center will also serve as a central information resource for all publicly available knockout mutants and will integrate with other databases that contain information on the physical and biochemical characteristics of the knockout mice, mouse DNA sequence, and mouse genetics.
The agreement with The Jackson Laboratory was part of $52 million awarded to other collaborating institutions. Projects at these institutions include producing thousands of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell lines (each with a different gene knocked out), producing ES cell lines suitable for high-throughput gene targeting or trapping in C57BL/6, and optimizing an existing C57BL/6 strain ES cell line and growth medium.
During KOMP's initial stages, researchers will be able to obtain the ES cells and the targeting vectors used to produce them from the grantees, allowing them to swiftly and efficiently produce live lines of knockout mice. Later, all these materials will be available to the entire scientific community from a central KOMP repository.
The resources produced by KOMP will be extremely useful for researching human disease. Each knockout will allow researchers to closely study and determine the role of a different gene in the 20,000-gene mouse genome. More importantly, the KOMP resources will allow biomedical researchers to develop better models of inherited human diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, diabetes, and obesity. Says NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., "Knockout mice are powerful tools for exploring the function of genes and creating animal models of human disease. By enabling more researchers to study these knockouts, this trans-NIH initiative will accelerate our efforts to translate basic research findings into new strategies for improving human health. . . . This is scientific teamwork at its best (www.genome.gov/19517927)."
