Generation of Transgenic Rats Using Lentiviral Vectors

Transgenesis is a valuable tool with which to study different aspects of gene function in the context of the intact organism. During the last two decades a tremendous number of transgenic animals have been generated, and the continuous improvement of technology and the development of new systems have fostered their widespread application in biomedical research. Generally, transgenic animals are generated by introducing foreign DNA into fertilized oocytes, which can be achieved either by injecting recombinant DNA into the pronucleus or by transferring lentiviral particles into the perivitelline space. While mice remain the favored species in many laboratories, there are a number of applications where the use of rats is advantageous. One such research area is multiple sclerosis. Here, several experimental models are available that are closely mimicking the human disease, and it is possible to induce neuroinflammation by transferring pathogenic T cells which can then be studied by flow cytometry and 2-photon live imaging. Unlike for mice, the development of transgenic rats has encountered some hurdles in the past, e.g., due to a complicated reproductive biology and the frailty of the fertilized oocytes in vitro. In this chapter we provide a protocol describing how we manipulate single cell embryos in our lab in order to efficiently generate transgenic rats in a variety of different strains using lentiviral gene transfer.