Generation and characterization of the Il11-Cre knock-in mouse

Interleukin-11 (Il11) is a cytokine that belongs to the IL-6 family and is involved in inflammation, fibrosis, cancer, and ageing. Here, we generated an Il11-Cre knock-in mouse line and crossed it with the R26-tdTomato reporter to label and track of Il11-positive cells and their descendants under both developmental and pathological conditions. Using multicolor immunofluorescence staining, we identified tdTomato cells in various cell types, including fibroblasts and osteoblasts in bone, neurons in brain, enteroendocrine cells and fibroblasts in the gastrointestinal tract, pancreatic β-cells, and serous acinar cells in the submandibular glands. Notably, we observed a significant increase in fibroblasts labelled by tdTomato in a colitis model. These results indicate that this Il11-Cre line can serve as a useful genetic tool for genetic manipulation studies based on the Cre-loxp system in the aforementioned cells.