Immunohistochemistry of the main olfactory epithelium, septal organ, and vomeronasal organ of heterozygotes shows wide Cre recombinase expression across the upper cell layers, co-staining with OMP and consistent with expression restricted to mature sensory neurons, but excluded from immature sensory neurons. This tamoxifen-inducible Cre allele has already been used to assess the survival of cohorts of olfactory and vomeronasal sensory neurons. By crossing to a cre-reporter, treating once with tamoxifen at E18.5, and counting reporter-expressing cells at various timepoints thereafter until 1 year of age, Holl (2018) found that the mean half-life for perinatally labelled olfactory sensory neurons is 26 days but also found that 7.8% of olfactory sensory neurons survive from E18.5 to 12 months of age. Holl also found that vomeronasal sensory neurons are more long-lived than olfactory sensory neurons, with no population decline from PD3.5 to 12 months of age.

This strain expresses tamoxifen-inducible cre/ERT2 in high levels in mature olfactory sensory neurons and mature vomeronasal sensory neurons. It is valuable for the inducible expression or deletion of loxP-flanked alleles or reporters specifically in these neurons.

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