Rat race in PD

Abstract

The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research didn't waste any time putting recently published knockout rat technology to work.1, 2 The foundation and Sigma-Aldrich Corp. have partnered to develop models of Parkinson's disease and hope to make five rat models available for research use within a year.In July, Sigma-Aldrich, in collaboration with Sangamo BioSciences Inc., Open Monoclonal Technology Inc. and the Medical College of Wisconsin, published the first targeted rat gene knockout, in Science. The knockout was produced using zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology developed by Sangamo. ZFNs induce targeted, double-stranded DNA breaks that can snip out specific genes of interest in a genome.3