| First Author | Szwarc MM | Year | 2017 |
| Journal | PLoS One | Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 3 | Pages | e0173014 |
| PubMed ID | 28253313 | Mgi Jnum | J:250516 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:5918095 | Doi | 10.1371/journal.pone.0173014 |
| Citation | Szwarc MM, et al. (2017) A bioluminescence reporter mouse that monitors expression of constitutively active beta-catenin. PLoS One 12(3):e0173014 |
| abstractText | This short technical report describes the generation and characterization of a bioluminescence reporter mouse that is engineered to detect and longitudinally monitor the expression of doxycycline-induced constitutively active beta-catenin. The new responder transgenic mouse contains the TetO-DeltaN89beta-CatTMILA transgene, which consists of the tet-operator followed by a bicistronic sequence encoding a stabilized form of active beta-catenin (DeltaN89beta-catenin), an internal ribosome entry site, and the firefly luciferase gene. To confirm that the transgene operates as designed, TetO-DeltaN89beta-CatTMILA transgenic mouse lines were crossed with an effector mouse that harbors the mouse mammary tumor virus-reverse tetracycline transactivator (MMTV-rtTA) transgene (termed MTB hereon), which primarily targets rtTA expression to the mammary epithelium. Following doxycycline administration, the resultant MTB/CatTMILA bigenic reporter exhibited precocious lobuloalveologenesis, ductal hyperplasia, and mammary adenocarcinomas, which were visualized and monitored by in vivo bioluminescence detection. Therefore, we predict that the TetO-DeltaN89beta-CatTMILA transgenic responder mouse-when crossed with the appropriate effector transgenic-will have wide-applicability to non-invasively monitor the influence of constitutively active beta-catenin expression on cell-fate specification, proliferation, differentiation, and neoplastic transformation in a broad spectrum of target tissues. |
