Hemizygotes are viable, fertile, normal in size, and do not display any behavioral abnormalities. Hemizygotes express tetracycline-controlled transactivator protein (tTA) in bone marrow hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) and in common myeloid progenitors (CMP)). tTA activity also is detected in lung. Little to no tTA activity is detected in thymus, lymph node, intestine or spleen. When bred to other transgenic mice carrying a gene of interest coupled to a tetracycline-responsive promoter element (TRE; tetO), expression of the target gene in the bitransgenic offspring can be induced by withdrawal of tetracycline or doxycycline. This strain represents an effective tool for generating bitrangenic animals to study inducible gene expression in blood stem and progenitor cells.
In an attempt to offer alleles on well-characterized or multiple genetic backgrounds, alleles are frequently moved to a genetic background different from that on which an allele was first characterized. This is the case for the strain above. It should be noted that the phenotype could vary from that originally described. We will modify the strain description if necessary as published results become available.
