Transgenic approaches to cerebellar development

The advent of transgenic mouse technology and the harnessing of homologous recombination to eliminate genes in living animals have provided powerful new approaches to investigate some of the fundamental issues in developmental neurobiology. In this chapter we illustrate several examples of the use of these technologies to investigate the murine cerebellum. These range from using inert, marker transgenes to follow the organization strategy of the cerebellum, to eliminating specific cell populations and modifying the function and fate of Purkinje cells. Finally, we provide a perspective on future extensions of these transgenic approaches.