Postmortem examination of transgenic mice

Postmortem examination of transgenic animals should ideally be performed by or with the help of a trained pathologist. This is because although the steps in the examination can be manually performed by anyone, the interpretation of the findings can only be done with the knowledge of veterinary medicine. This chapter describes the steps in a postmortem examination (necropsy), and does not attempt to describe pathological lesions and their significance. This method is a systematic approach to detecting gross abnormalities. These abnormalities can then be further examined at the microscopic level or be submitted to other laboratory tests (see Note. 1). Prior knowledge of the anatomy of the animal species examined is necessary (1). Always perform necropsies on freshly killed animals or as soon as they are discovered dead. Necropsies performed on animals that have been dead for more than 24 h generally do not yield much useful information or material for further study.