The Importance of Mouse ES Cell Line Selection
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The choice of a specific parental ES cell line used to create a genetically modified mouse has critical impact on the overall success of the project – affecting costs, complexity of effort, and time to efficient project completion. Despite the importance of making a thoughtful choice, many people default to employing a familiar cell line previously used in their laboratory or they are limited to the cell lines available from the service facility at their Institution. With careful consideration of a few key experimental parameters, the investigator can easily avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Historically, substrains of 129 strain mice have been used to create the majority of parental ES cell lines now in common use. Often these cell lines have been expanded many times and shared among colleagues, rather than being obtained directly from the laboratory in which they were originally established. Although this was a common practice in the early days of ES cell technology, avenues are now in place to assure optimal cell line history, health, genetic integrity, and performance. Methods for establishing new ES cell lines have greatly improved. Well-validated ES cell lines are now commercially available from a variety of genetic backgrounds beyond the 129-strain. In this chapter, we will discuss critical factors to consider, when choosing an ES cell line for a project.
