Red2Flpe-SCON: A Versatile, Multicolor Strategy for Generating Mosaic Conditional Knockout Mice

Abstract

Image-based lineage tracing enables tissue turnover kinetics and lineage potentials of different adult cell populations to be investigated. Previously, we reported a genetic mouse model system, Red2Onco, which ectopically expressed mutated oncogenes together with red fluorescent proteins (RFP). This system enabled the expansion kinetics and neighboring effects of oncogenic clones to be dissected. We now report Red2Flpe-SCON: a new mosaic knockout system that uses multicolor reporters to label both mutant and wild-type cells. We have developed the Red2Flpe mouse line for red clone-specific Flpe expression, as well as the FRT-based SCON (Short Conditional IntrON) method to facilitate tunable conditional mosaic knockouts in mice. We used the Red2Flpe-SCON method to study Sox2 mutant clonal analysis in the esophageal epithelium of adult mice which revealed that the stem cell gene, Sox2, is not essential for adult stem cell maintenance itself, but rather for stem cell proliferation and differentiation.