invited review Analysis of organ physiology in transgenic mice

C1–C18, 2000.—The increasing availability of transgenic mouse models of gene deletion and human disease has man-dated the development of creative approaches to characterize mouse phenotype. The mouse presents unique challenges to phenotype analysis because of its small size, habits, and inability to verbalize clinical symptoms. This review de-scribes strategies to study mouse organ physiology, focusing on the cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, gastrointestinal, and neurobehavioral systems. General concerns about eval-uating mouse phenotype studies are discussed. Monitoring and anesthesia methods are reviewed, with emphasis on the feasibility and limitations of noninvasive and invasive pro-cedures to monitor physiological parameters, do cannula-tions, and perform surgical procedures. Examples of pheno-type studies are cited to demonstrate the practica