The peptide symporter SLC15a4 is essential for the development of systemic lupus erythematosus in murine models.

Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease representing a serious unmet medical need. The disease is associated with the loss of self-tolerance and exaggerated B cell activation, resulting in autoantibody production and the formation of immune complexes that accumulate in the kidney, causing glomerulonephritis. TLR7, an important mediator of the innate immune response, drives the expression of type-1 interferon (IFN), which leads to expression of type-1 IFN induced genes and aggravates lupus pathology.

Microinjection and Oviduct Transfer Procedures for Rat Model Generation with CRISPR-Cas9 Technology.

Since the first knockout rat model was generated with zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) by Geurt's group in 2009, the demand for making targeted rat models has increased tremendously. The advent of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9) system provides researchers with a more efficient method for producing modified animals, which has since then been developed and applied in rat. Since we established a rat model production system at our facility in 2014, we have consistently generated rat models.

Comparison of BALB/c and B6-albino mouse strain blastocysts as hosts for the injection of C57BL6/N-derived C2 embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem (ES) cells from a C57BL/6N (B6N) background injected into B6(Cg)-Tyrc-2J/J (B6-albino) recipient blastocysts are commonly used for generating genetically modified mouse models. To understand the influence of the recipient blastocyst strain on germline transmission, BALB/cAnNTac and B6-albino germline transmission rates were compared using the C57BL6/N-derived C2 ES cell line. A total of 92 ES cell clones from 27 constructs were injected.