Tooth1 (Tth1) is a hypothetical new gene identified in Xenopus. Adult Xenopis wi
ID: 252487 • Letter: T
Question
Tooth1 (Tth1) is a hypothetical new gene identified in Xenopus. Adult Xenopis with a mutation in Tth1 fail to develop teeth. You are interested in tooth development in mammals and you use mice as a model. Mice develop teeth from the oral epithelium starting embryonic day 11 to day 16. You want to determine if Tth1 is involved in tooth development, but unfortunately Tth1 knockout mice die on a day 5 of development. Fortunately, there is a well- described promoter that is specific to the oral epithelium (the "OE1" promoter). Describe an inducible conditional knockout model that could be used to determine the function of Tth1 in early (day11 to day 16) tooth development without deleting Tth1 in other tissues.
Explanation / Answer
For this particular system, one could either use a time dependent tetracycline/drug inducible conditional knockout model, where the specific tooth1 Tth1 gene under OE1 promoter (Cre-flox system) is knocked out at specific stage of development (say day 11 to day 16) in presence of tetracycline/drug and recovered once tetracycline gets released from mouse body. During this process, if this condtional knockout leads to a phenotype the functionn of tth1 gene can be identified.