Constitutive and Inducible Systems for Genetic In Vivo Modification of Mouse Hepatocytes Using Hydrodynamic Tail Vein Injection.

In research models of liver cancer, regeneration, inflammation, and fibrosis, flexible systems for in vivo gene expression and silencing are highly useful. Hydrodynamic tail vein injection of transposon-based constructs is an efficient method for genetic manipulation of hepatocytes in adult mice. In addition to constitutive transgene expression, this system can be used for more advanced applications, such as shRNA-mediated gene knock-down, implication of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to induce gene mutations, or inducible systems.

An in vivo transfection system for inducible gene expression and gene silencing in murine hepatocytes.

Background: Hydrodynamic tail vein injection (HTVI) of transposon-based integration vectors is an established system for stably transfecting mouse hepatocytes in vivo that has been successfully employed to study key questions in liver biology and cancer. Refining the vectors for transposon-mediated hepatocyte transfection will further expand the range of applications of this technique in liver research. In the present study, we report an advanced transposon-based system for manipulating gene expression in hepatocytes in vivo.