Final stage of mouse genetics project gets underway with €12M EU grant

The final €12 million stage of an international project to discover the function of every gene in the mouse genome has got underway, under the leadership of Wolfgang Wurst, director of the Institute of Developmental Genetics at the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen.

At the same time, moves are in hand to open up the findings of the project, which contribute will to a better understanding of the pathogenesis of diseases such as Alzheimer's, depression, diabetes, chronic lung diseases and cancer, for commercial exploitation.

The eight partners in the Eucommtools project will work on knocking out the last 3,500 of the roughly 20,000 genes in the mouse genome. “Our aim in the next five years, together with our American and Canadian partners in the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC), is to complete the mutagenesis of the mouse genome in order to systematically elucidate the function of all genes during development and in the adult mouse,” Wurst said.

The gene inactivation will be in particular targeted cells, tissues and organs, thus permitting the analysis of gene function in its biological context.

Technologically, this approach requires a combination of conditional gene targeting and site-specific, inducible mouse lines. Two hundred and fifty of these lines will be generated and characterised as part of the Eucommtools project. In addition, scientists involved in the project will develop new genetic tools to accelerate the process of conditional gene function annotation.

The outputs will be made available to the international scientific community via the IKMC web portal. In the European Mouse Mutant Cell Repository (EuMMCR), scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München archive and distribute upon mutant cells as well as genetic tools for functional gene analysis.

“Right now we are preparing the legal basis for offering our materials and technologies to commercial partners as well,” said Cornelia Kaloff, project manager.

Joining Helmholtz Zentrum München in Eucommtools are Genome Research Limited of the UK; the European Molecular Biology Laboratory; Technische Universität Dresden; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche; Centre Européen de Recherche en Biologie et en Médecine in France; Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche in Spain and the UK Medical Research Council.