Generation and confirmation of bone-specific Kif3a conditional knockout mice.

<p>(<b>A</b>) A typical agarose gel resulting from PCR genotyping of genomic DNA from tail biopsies of transgenic mice. Bands indicate floxed (490 bp) and wild-type (360 bp) <i>Kif3a</i> and <i>Cre</i> recombinase (650 bp). 18S (870 bp) used as a positive control in the <i>Cre</i> PCR reactions. Floxed and recombined <i>Kif3a</i> allele present in <i>Colα1(I) 2.3-Cre;Kif3a^fl/fl</i> mice due to heterogeneous tissue in tail biopsies. (<b>B</b>) To assess <i>Cre</i> specificity, <i>Colα1(I) 2.3-Cre</i> mice were crossed with <i>Rosa26R</i> reporter mice. Effective <i>Cre</i> recombination was detected by LacZ staining in osteoblasts and osteocytes of <i>Colα1(I) 2.3-Cre;R26R</i> mice (right) but not in littermates lacking <i>Cre</i> (left). LacZ staining was not visible in muscle tissue of <i>Colα1(I) 2.3-Cre;R26R</i> mice. (b- bone, bm- bone marrow, m- muscle).