Transgenic rats with green, red and blue fluorescence: powerful tools for bioimaging, cell trafficking, and differentiation

摘要

The rat represents a perfect animal for broadening medical experiments, because its physiology has been wellunderstood in the history of experimental animals. In addition, its larger body size takes enough advantage for surgicalmanipulation, compared to the mouse. Many rat models mimicking human diseases, therefore, have been used in avariety of biomedical studies including physiology, pharmacology, transplantation, and immunology. In an effort tocreate the specifically designed rats for biomedical research and regenerative medicine, we have developed theengineered rat system on the basis of transgenic technology and succeeded in establishing various transgenic rat strains.The transgenic rats with green fluorescent protein (GFP) were generated in the two different strains (Wistar and Lewis),in which GFP is driven under the chicken beta-actin promoter and cytomegalovirus enhancer (CAG promoter). TheirGFP expression levels were different in each organ, but the Lewis line expressed GFP strongly and ubiquitously in mostof the organs compared with that of Wistar. For red fluorescence, DsRed2 was transduced to the Wistar rats: one linespecifically expresses DsRed2 in the liver under the mouse albumin promoter, another is designed for the Cre/LoxPsystem as the double reporter rat (the initial DsRed2 expression turns on GFP in the presence of Cre recombinase).LacZ-transgenic rats represent blue color, and LacZ is driven the CAG (DA) or ROSA26 promoter (Lewis). Our uniquetransgenic rats’ system highlights the powerful performance for the elucidation of many cellular processes inregenerative medicine, leading to innovative medical treatments.