Knockout Mouse Project

Baylor College of Medicine leads one of three groups that has received a total of $110 million from a trans-National Institutes of Health project over the next five years to build a better mouse model – in fact a library of knockout mice that will enable scientists to identify the function of important protein-coding genes in the mammalian genome and to better understand the disease.

Phase 2 of the Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Project, in cooperation with the International Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, will create 5,000 strains of knockout mice and determine their physical characteristics. Knockout mice are bred to lack a specific gene – either in all their tissues or only in specific tissues or at a specific time. In its first phase, the project started the process of creating mouse embryonic stem cell lines for each of the approximately 21,000 protein-coding genes in the mouse genome.