TY  - GEN
T1  - Efficient FLP-mediated germ-line recombination in C. elegans 
AU  - Macías-León, Javier
AU  - Askjaer, Peter
DO  - 10.17912/W2G66S
UR  - http://beta.micropublication.org/journals/biology/w2g66s/
AB  - ​Recombinases are very useful enzymes for spatiotemporal control of gene expression (Hubbard 2014). Through binding to specific DNA sequences, they can be used to excise or exchange DNA fragments. We have previously generated a series of Caenorhabditis elegans strains that stably express an efficient FLP recombinase in specific tissues and reported how they enable precise regulation of gene expression, cell ablation or conditional gene knockout (Muñoz-Jiménez et al 2017). However, these strains are restricted to somatic tissues. Here we describe a novel strain that expresses FLP specifically in the germ line from an integrated single-copy transgene. Employing a dual color reporter, we found ~100% recombination efficiency, implying that the strain can be useful for a variety of experiments. This includes 1) induce germ-line expression of genes that have a negative effect on animal fitness (and thus are difficult or impossible to maintain as stably expressing strain); 2) permanently remove selectable markers flanked by Frt sites by easy crossing. For comparison, the elegant SapTrap toolkit for CRISPR/Cas9 genome modification relies on a loxP-flanked unc-119(+) transgene, whose removal requires injection of a Cre expression plasmid (Schwartz & Jorgensen 2016); 3) stable and precise knockout (KO) of genes flanked by Frt sites or tagged by a unique GFP KO cassette (Muñoz-Jiménez et al 2017).
PY  - 2018
JO  - microPublication Biology
ER  -