Special Breeding Techniques for Use in Mouse Mutation Analysis

Certain specialized breeding techniques may come in handy during the analysis of a mutation in order to further understanding of the mutation and its interactions with other genes. Different mutant alleles of the gene in question might be available from other sources or mutations with similar phenotypes could potentially be alleles. This could be determined by complementation testing. In the production of a conditional allele, retention of exogenous DNA in the allele could fortuitously disrupt a regulatory element and thus result in a hypomorphic allele, which can be simply tested by breeding. Mutations in different genes frequently affect the same organ, tissue, or cell type through genetic interactions. Common approaches to investigate and interpret genetic interactions are detailed here for gene families, in which there may be redundancy or genetic compensation of different genes, for genes that constitute different components of a biochemical pathway, for genes with overlapping expression patterns, and for unrelated genes that produce similar mutant phenotypes.