| First Author | Badea TC | Year | 2003 |
| Journal | J Neurosci | Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 6 | Pages | 2314-22 |
| PubMed ID | 12657690 | Mgi Jnum | J:84747 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:2669520 | Doi | 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.23-06-02314.2003 |
| Citation | Badea TC, et al. (2003) A noninvasive genetic/pharmacologic strategy for visualizing cell morphology and clonal relationships in the mouse. J Neurosci 23(6):2314-22 |
| abstractText | Analysis of cellular morphology is the most general approach to neuronal classification. With the increased use of genetically engineered mice, there is a growing need for methods that can selectively visualize the morphologies of specified subsets of neurons. This capability is needed both to define cell morphologic phenotypes and to mark cells in a noninvasive manner for lineage studies. To this end, we describe a bipartite genetic system based on a Cre-estrogen receptor (ER) fusion protein that irreversibly activates a plasma membrane-bound alkaline phosphatase reporter gene by site-specific recombination. Because the efficiency and timing of gene rearrangement is controlled pharmacologically, a sparse subset of labeled cells can be generated from the set of CreER-expressing cells at any time during development. Histochemical visualization of alkaline phosphatase activity reveals neuronal morphology with strong and uniform labeling of all processes. |
