International Knockout Mouse Consortium

Main Objectives

• Generation, archiving, and world-wide distribution of up to 12.000 conditional mutations across the mouse genome in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells
• Establishment of a limited number of mouse mutants from this resource

Mutagenesis Strategies

• Conditional gene trapping - random approach for expressed genes
• Conditional targeted trapping - directed approach, used for expressed genes
• Conditional gene targeting - directed approach, used for non-expressed genes

Networking

• Generation of European mouse functional genomics platform by synergistic integration of EMMA, EUMODIC, EURExpress, FLPFLEX , FunGenES, PRIME and others
• Cornerstone of world-wide mouse mutagenesis effort, member of the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC)

Societal Benefits

• Improvement of health research
• Speedup of drug development, therapy and diagnosis
• Competitive advantage for pharmaceutical industry

Funding & Structure

• Funded by European Union (FP 6, Priority 1 "Life Sciences, Genomics and Biotechnology for Health")
• EU funding: up to 13 million Euros
• Integrated Project
• Consortium: 9 participants from four European countries