A Genome-Wide Collection of <em>Mos1</em> Transposon Insertion Mutants for the <em>C. elegans</em> Research Community

<div><p>Methods that use homologous recombination to engineer the genome of <em>C. elegans</em> commonly use strains carrying specific insertions of the heterologous transposon <em>Mos1</em>. A large collection of known <em>Mos1</em> insertion alleles would therefore be of general interest to the <em>C. elegans</em> research community. We describe here the optimization of a semi-automated methodology for the construction of a substantial collection of <em>Mos1</em> insertion mutant strains. At peak production, more than 5,000 strains were generated per month. These strains were then subject to molecular analysis, and more than 13,300 <em>Mos1</em> insertions characterized. In addition to targeting directly more than 4,700 genes, these alleles represent the potential starting point for the engineered deletion of essentially all <em>C. elegans</em> genes and the modification of more than 40% of them. This collection of mutants, generated under the auspices of the European NEMAGENETAG consortium, is publicly available and represents an important research resource.</p>