Engineering subtle targeted mutations into the mouse genome

Homologous recombination in embryonic stem (ES) cells offers an exquisitely precise mechanism to introduce targeted modifications to the mouse genome. This ability to produce specific alterations to the mouse genome has become an essential tool for the analysis of gene function and the development of mouse models of human disease. Of the many thousands of mouse alleles that have been generated by gene targeting, the majority are designed to completely ablate gene function, to create conditional alleles that are inactivated in the presence of Cre recombinase, or to produce reporter alleles that label-specific tissues or cell populations (Eppig et al., 2012, Nucleic Acids Res 40:D881-D886). However, there is a variety of powerful motivations for the introduction of subtle targeted mutations (STMs) such as point mutations, small deletions, or small insertions into the mouse genome. The introduction of STMs allows the ablation of specific transcript isoforms, permits the functional investigation of particular domains or amino acids within a protein, provides the ability to study the role of specific sites with in cis-regulatory elements, and can result in better mouse models of human genetic disorders. In this review, I examine the current strategies that are commonly used to introduce STMs into the mouse genome and highlight new gene targeting technologies, including TALENs and CRISPR/Cas, which are likely to influence the future of gene targeting in mice.