Cre-Lox recombination

Common card · No. 472564

Cre-Lox recombination is a site-specific recombinase technology, used to carry out deletions, insertions, translocations and inversions at specific sites in the DNA of cells. It allows the DNA modification to be targeted to a specific cell type or be triggered by a specific external stimulus. It is implemented both in eukaryotic and prokaryotic systems. The Cre-lox recombination system has been particularly useful to help neuroscientists to study the brain in which complex cell types and neural circuits come together to generate cognition and behaviors. NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research has created several hundreds of Cre driver mouse lines which are currently used by the worldwide neuroscience community. An important application of the Cre-lox system is excision of selectable markers in gene replacement. Commonly used gene replacement strategies introduce selectable markers into the genome to facilitate selection of genetic mutations that may cause growth retardation. However, marker...

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