Targeted Retroviral Infection of mammary Cells in Viral Receptor Transgenics

摘要

Presently, the most common way to analyze gene function in a particular cell type in vivo is to generate a new transgenic line for each gene under study - a costly and time consuming endeavor. Here we describe an approach which utilizes mice expressing a retroviral receptor transgene (the Rous sarcoma virus receptor) to target infection of retroviral vectors in vivo. This allows directed infection, and thus directed gene expression, of cells expressing the viral receptor and provides a rapid and efficient method to test the mammary tumorigenic potential of genes in an animal model. An important difference between this approach and testing gene function in transgenic mice is that infection, and thus gene expression, can be temporally controlled allowing assessment of differences in oncogenic potential at different stages of mammary gland development. Finally, multiple oncogenes can be introduced by co- infection, allowing questions of synergy to be addressed. The work reported here documents our laboratory's efforts to develop murine leukemia virus-based vectors and optimize conditions for use of these vectors in this system.