Transposon Mutagenesis in Mice

Understanding the functional landscape of the mammalian genome is the next big challenge of biomedical research. The completion of the first phases of the mouse and human genome projects, and expression analyses using microarray hybridization, generate critically important questions about the functional landscape and structure of the mammalian genome: how many genes, and of what type, are there; what kind of functional elements make up a properly functioning gene? One step in this process will be to create mutations in every identifiable mouse gene and analyze the resultant phenotypes. Transposons are being considered as tools to further initiatives to create a comprehensive resource of mutant mouse strains. Also, it may be possible to use transposons in true forward genetic screens in the mouse. The “Sleeping Beauty” (SB) transposon system is one such tool. Moreover, due to its tendency for local hopping, SB has been proposed as a method for regional saturation mutagenesis of the mouse genome. In this chapter, we review the tools and methods currently available to create mutant mice using in vivo, germline transposition in mice.