The German Mouse Clinic – Running an Open Access Platform

Abstract

Next challenges in functional annotation of mammalian genomes are yet of a much larger scope than previous genomics initiatives. Mouse mutant resources must be phenotyped systematically (one after the other) and systemically (assessing all organ systems). In addition, for the next generation of mouse models the “envirotypes”, that humans are exposed to, need to be modeled. We established the German Mouse Clinic (GMC) as a mouse phenotyping platform for systemic, standardized phenotypic analysis and interpretation and open access for the scientific community on a collaborative basis. Next to phenotyping mouse models from national and international programs we provide the logistics to analyse mutant mouse lines from different origins (e.g., Knock-outs, Knock-ins, Gene-traps, RNAi Knock-downs, ENU mutagenesis, QTL studies) from collaboration partners throughout the world. Here we present an overview of how we organize a high-throughput screening of mouse lines from different laboratories and describe specific methods of selected screens in more detail.