Researchers who conduct studies in mice as a window into human diseases will soon have a valuable tool for studying biological processes, disease development, drug efficacy, and other areas.
A project to generate strains of knockout mice and provide detailed information about their traits will help investigators develop better mouse models of human diseases.
This tool is a goal of the Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP), part of an international effort to provide scientists access to resources and information related to approximately 5000 strains of knockout mice, each of which harbors an inactivated gene. The project just received a boost of more than $110 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which will allow it to begin KOMP,2 the second phase of an endeavor that aims to establish reliable mouse models of human disease and provide insights into the consequences of eliminating a single gene.