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Making a knockout mouse: From stem cells to embryos

Nature Cell Biology volume 15, page 1133 (2013)Cite this article

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I began my research career in the UK as a graduate student in the mid 1970s with Richard Gardner, a pioneer in mammalian experimental embryology. It marked the beginning of my interest in the blastocyst as a model system to study early cell lineage development, a fascination that continues today as we uncover the signalling pathways and transcriptional networks that underlie lineage specification. Studying the mouse blastocyst has led me down many different winding paths over the years. None has been more exciting and career-changing than the period in the mid-to-late 1980s, when my lab (and many others) got caught up in the revolution in mammalian genetics brought about by the development of targeted mutagenesis in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs).

In 1985, I left a faculty position at Brock University, St Catharines, to join the newly formed Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. Under the leadership of Lou Siminovitch and Alan Bernstein, the institute very rapidly gained a reputation for outstanding science and state-of-the-art approaches to studying molecular development and cancer. Soon after, Alex Joyner joined as a new faculty member, following a post-doctoral position with Gail Martin, where she had cloned the mouse engrailed genes. The discovery of vertebrate orthologues of fly developmental control genes, including the Hox genes and engrailed, changed mammalian developmental biology forever. I remember many earlier conferences where those of us studying the mouse would be relegated to the session after the banquet, as an esoteric subject with little insight to be gained from comparison with other species. Suddenly it became obvious that many of the underlying principles and genetic pathways of development were conserved.

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  1. Janet Rossant is a Senior Scientist and the Chief of Research at The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1X8, Canada,

    Janet Rossant

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  1. Janet Rossant
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Correspondence to Janet Rossant.

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Rossant, J. Making a knockout mouse: From stem cells to embryos. Nat Cell Biol 15, 1133 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb2850

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