The National Institutes of Health will dole out $110 million to begin the second phase of the Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP), which will generate about 5,000 strains of adult mice from knockout mouse embryonic stem cells. Over the next 5 years, researchers will document the appearance, behavior, and other characteristics of the mice to reveal how traits are affected by deleting a given gene. Each mouse will undergo the same analyses so that results can be compared for all of the tested mice.

The Knockout Mouse Project will generate about 5,000 strains of adult mice and document their appearance, behavior, and other characteristics. Here, a mouse in which a gene affecting hair growth has been knocked out (left) is shown next to a normal lab mouse. [Photo courtesy of Maggie Bartlett, National Human Genome Research Institute]
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The Knockout Mouse Project will generate about 5,000 strains of adult mice and document their appearance, behavior, and other characteristics. Here, a mouse in which a gene affecting hair growth has been knocked out (left) is shown next to a normal lab mouse. [Photo courtesy of Maggie Bartlett, National Human Genome Research Institute]

The Knockout Mouse Project will generate about 5,000 strains of adult mice and document their appearance, behavior, and other characteristics. Here, a mouse in which a gene affecting hair growth has been knocked out (left) is shown next to a normal lab mouse. [Photo courtesy of Maggie Bartlett, National Human Genome Research Institute]
View largeDownload slide

The Knockout Mouse Project will generate about 5,000 strains of adult mice and document their appearance, behavior, and other characteristics. Here, a mouse in which a gene affecting hair growth has been knocked out (left) is shown next to a normal lab mouse. [Photo courtesy of Maggie Bartlett, National Human Genome Research Institute]

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KOMP will enable researchers to establish the traits associated with the function of every protein-coding gene. Such information will aid in the discovery of the genetic causes of human cancers and other diseases, as well as efforts to identify new drug targets. The data will be placed in a public database, allowing researchers to explore gene function without having to generate their own lines of knockout mice, an often expensive and inefficient approach. For more information, go to www.komp.org.

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©2011 American Association for Cancer Research.
2011