Chapter 20 The Cre / Lox System to Assess the Development of the Mouse Brain

Abstract

Cre-mediated recombination has become a powerful tool to confi ne gene deletions (conditional knock-outs) or overexpression of genes (conditional knockin/overexpression). By spatiotemporal restriction of genetic manipulations, major problems of classical knockouts such as embryonic lethality can be circum-vented. Furthermore Cre-mediated recombination has broad applicability in the analysis of the cellular behavior of subpopulations and cell types as well as for genetic fate mapping. This chapter will give an overview about applications for the Cre/ LoxP system and their execution.