Transgenic animal methodologies and their applications.

In the past 10 years the capacity has been acquired to genetically transform mammals via insertion of genes into developmentally totipotent embryonic cells. This profound advance has impacted significantly on our understanding of basic mechanisms of gene regulation, and has enabled practitioner's of this "transgenic technology" to establish important paradigms for the genetic engineering of experimental animals and livestock. The two most powerful forms of genetic engineering to emerge from this research include the targeted expression of foreign genes, or transgenes, and the ability to target specific endogenous mouse genes for mutagenesis. In this presentation I will outline the general principles underlying this technology, and provide examples of its use in research on cancer and aging that are ongoing in our laboratory.