Mouse genomics - MICER

The Wellcome Trust's Mutagenic Insertion and Chromosome Engineering Resource (MICER) is a publicly available supply of 93 960 ready-made insertional targeting vectors in two libraries, for generating knockouts and for large-scale deletions, inversions, or duplications.

Instead of having to screen a library for a particular gene or region of interest and then find a bacterial artificial chromosome clone or a genomic clone, the clone can be found online at the MICER website, eliminating the effort that would otherwise be needed in generating those resources.

With this online resource, a targeting vector can be identified in a matter of minutes and acquired within a few days.

The vectors also contain different positive selection markers for different vectors (either neomycin or puromycin) and a coat colour marker (either tyrosinase, which turns a white mouse black, or agouti, which turns a brown mouse yellow). The coat colour marker tracks the mutations from one generation to the next, making the downstream tracking very easy and avoids many procedures on animals.