EUCOMM

The European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program or EUCOMM is an EU-funded program to generate a library of mutant mouse embryonic stem cells for research purposes.

Setup

The EUCOMM program is funded by the European Union sixth R&D programme to make a library of mutant mouse embryonic stem cell clones (ES cells), to enable the mouse research community to rapidly create mutant mice with specific mutant genes. The EUCOMM consortium is a member of the International Knockout Mouse Consortium, (an organisation including the EUCOMM, KOMP, NorCOMM and TIGM consortia) which reflects a commitment to share and promote their products and technology with the international research community.

Stem cell creation

Each stem cell contains one mutant gene copy and one 'wild-type' (normal) gene copy. The entire library is intended to mutate 13,000 genes in total. Of these 13000 mutant genes, 8000 mutations in mouse ES Cells are 'targeted': that is, the mutation which knocks out gene function is inserted precisely into the genome. The remaining 5000 mutations are derived from 'gene-traps'. These mutations are created by infecting ES Cells with an appropriately modified retrovirus. The retrovirus inserts itself 'randomly' into the mouse genome. When it inserts into a gene's intron, the introduced DNA will stop that gene copy being expressed, and the gene is considered to be knocked out (see gene trapping).