The Mouse Models
The mouse models can be divided in three major groups:
- mice with so called "floxed"allels (containing exons flanked by loxP sites) of target
genes with a complex role in immunity and expressed by several cell types of the immune system;
- transgenic mice expressing Cre exclusively in a particular cell type either
constitutively or inducible;
- cell lineage ablation models, based on Cre/loxP recombination either constitutive or
inducible, enabling the analysis of the involvement of particular cellular subsets in the immune response.
Cross breeding of mice of group (1) and (2) results in offspring with a deficiency of the target gene in
only one particular cell lineage (conditional KO) depending on the expression profile of the Cre transgenic
mouse.
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