International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium
The International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) is an international scientific endeavour to create and characterize the phenotype of 20,000 knockout mouse strains. Launched in September 2011, the consortium consists of over 15 research institutes across four continents with funding provided by the NIH, European national governments and the partner institutions.The initiative is projected to take 10 years (until 2021), and will focus on analysing homozygous mutant mice generated on an isogenic C57BL/6N background by the International Knockout Mouse Consortium. The mouse strains are characterized in a broad based phenotyping pipeline that is focused on revealing insights into human disease by measuring embryonic, neuromuscular, sensory, cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, haematological, and neurological parameters. The protocols used to assess these phenotypes have been standardized across the IMPC partners and are available at IMPReSS.
Mouse strains generated by the IMPC partners are deposited at the KOMP repository and the European Mutant Mouse Archive. In many cases, strains carrying one of two types of alleles will be archived - a null allele used in the primary IMPC phenotyping pipeline and a conditional ready allele that allows tissue restricted knockouts via the Cre-Lox Recombination and FLP-FRT recombination systems.
The phenotypic data is recorded in a freely accessible, fully searchable online database, generating what has been described as a "comprehensive encyclopaedia of mammalian gene function." Provided by Wikipedia
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