Construction and Analysis of Transgenic Animals Overexpressing Neurotrophins

The ability to manipulate the mouse genome has provided extremely useful model systems for studying the underlying molecular mechanisms of neurotrophin peptide action in mammalian development and adult systems. One way to use transgenics is to overexpress neurotrophins in neuronal target tissues to investigate how target expression of neurotrophic factors affects neuronal development and function in the adult. This review presents the basic experimental design considerations of this approach and describes selected techniques used to evaluate transgenic phenotypes.