Instant conditional transgenesis in the mouse hematopoietic compartment

Adoptive transfer of retrovirally transduced stem cells has recently been described for instant transgenesis in the hematopoietic compartment of mice. This method circumvents the need to manipulate the germline. However, cell type specific gene expression in this ‘retrogenic’ mouse model has remained tedious. Here we report a single retroviral vector-based method to rapidly generate conditional retrogenic mice. For this purpose, mutated loxP-flanked DNA segments are transduced into hematopoietic stem cells isolated from Cre recombinase transgenic mice, which are subsequently transferred into immunodeficient mice. In this way gene expression can be restricted to hematopoietic cell lineages of choice in the acquired immune system.