Experimental Animals
Online ISSN : 1881-7122
Print ISSN : 1341-1357
ISSN-L : 0007-5124
Original
Flk1-GFP BAC Tg Mice: An Animal Model for the Study of Blood Vessel Development
Hiroyuki ISHITOBIKen MATSUMOTOTakuya AZAMIFumiko ITOHSusumu ITOHSatoru TAKAHASHIMasatsugu EMA
Author information
JOURNAL FREE ACCESS

2010 Volume 59 Issue 5 Pages 615-622

Details
Abstract

The mouse Flk1 (also called Kdr or Vegf-r2) gene encodes a receptor for VEGF-A. Flk1 is expressed in endothelial cells of the developing embryo. Recent studies have shown that Flk1 is expressed by multi-potent mesodermal progenitors, which give rise to various hematopoietic and cardiovascular cell lineages during development, and in differentiating ES cells, which may be used for cell transplantation therapy to treat cardiovascular diseases. Given its developmental and clinical importance in cardiovascular tissues, an animal model of Flk1 activity would be very useful. Here, we report the generation of Flk1-GFP BAC transgenic mice for monitoring Flk1 gene expression during development. We show that GFP expression in these mice serves as a surrogate marker for developing endothelial cells. Immunohistochemical analysis showed that the regions of expression of GFP and endogenous FLK1 largely overlap. Uniform GFP expression was observed in most endothelial cells at 8.5 dpc and thereafter. Flk1-GFP BAC transgenic mice should be useful for the study of both vascular development and pathological angiogenesis.

Content from these authors
© 2010 Japanese Association for Laboratory Animal Science
Previous article Next article
feedback
Top