A simple guide for generating BAC transgenic animals for retinal research

Bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) are genomic tools that can carry several hundred kilobases of exogenous genomic material. This allows to incorporate sufficiently large DNA stretches to include most if not all upstream and downstream cis-regulatory elements of a gene in order to mimic and analyze its endogenous regulation of expression using a reporter protein in vivo. Here, we illustrate the generation of a BAC:LIF-EGFP transgenic mouse line to describe a simplified version of BAC transgenesis using galK-based recombineering