Cre/lox-assisted non-invasive in vivo tracking of specific cell populations by positron emission tomography
Date
2017-09-05
Authors
Thunemann, Martin
Schörg, Barbara F.
Feil, Susanne
Lin, Yun
Voelkl, Jakob
Golla, Matthias
Vachaviolos, Angelos
Kohlhofer, Ursula
Quintanilla-Martinez, Leticia
Olbrich, Marcus
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
Martin Thunemann, Barbara F Schörg, Susanne Feil, Yun Lin, Jakob Voelkl, Matthias Golla, Angelos Vachaviolos, Ursula Kohlhofer, Leticia Quintanilla-Martinez, Marcus Olbrich, Walter Ehrlichmann, Gerald Reischl, Christoph M Griessinger, Harald F Langer, Meinrad Gawaz, Florian Lang, Michael Schäfers, Manfred Kneilling, Bernd J Pichler, Robert Feil. 2017. "Cre/lox-assisted non-invasive in vivo tracking of specific cell populations by positron emission tomography.." Nat Commun, Volume 8, Issue 1, pp. 444 - ?. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-00482-y
Abstract
Many pathophysiological processes are associated with proliferation, migration or death of distinct cell populations. Monitoring specific cell types and their progeny in a non-invasive, longitudinal and quantitative manner is still challenging. Here we show a novel cell-tracking system that combines Cre/lox-assisted cell fate mapping with a thymidine kinase (sr39tk) reporter gene for cell detection by positron emission tomography (PET). We generate Rosa26-mT/sr39tk PET reporter mice and induce sr39tk expression in platelets, T lymphocytes or cardiomyocytes. As proof of concept, we demonstrate that our mouse model permits longitudinal PET imaging and quantification of T-cell homing during inflammation and cardiomyocyte viability after myocardial infarction. Moreover, Rosa26-mT/sr39tk mice are useful for whole-body characterization of transgenic Cre mice and to detect previously unknown Cre activity. We anticipate that the Cre-switchable PET reporter mice will be broadly applicable for non-invasive long-term tracking of selected cell populations in vivo.Non-invasive cell tracking is a powerful method to visualize cells in vivo under physiological and pathophysiological conditions. Here Thunemann et al. generate a mouse model for in vivo tracking and quantification of specific cell types by combining a PET reporter gene with Cre-dependent activation that can be exploited for any cell population for which a Cre mouse line is available.
Description
License
© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.