Genome editing to explore the effects of allelic variation and epigenetics on gene regulation in health and disease

We have used comparative genomics to identify many of the gene regulatory regions that control the tissue specific expression of a number of different neuropeptide genes. Characterisation of these sequences, and their disease associated allelic variants, were subsequently achieved using a combination of primary cell reporter assays and transgenic mouse analysis. However, our studies have been limited by a lack of a cheap and efficient method of deleting these regulatory sequences from the mouse genome that would allow functional analysis in-vivo.

Source: Neuropeptides - October 1, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Alasdair MacKenzie, Elizabeth Hay, Evgeni Ivanov Source Type: research