InVivo Biosystems services

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is widely used in genetic and biomedical research. DNA fragment insertions can be introduced into the C. elegans genome. Our C. elegans knock-in services include point mutations, floxed alleles, degron tagging, fluorescent tagging and immunotagging. In the past 5 years, InVivo Biosystems has made over 600 fluorescent transgenic lines includuing 15 different fluorophores, 8 of which are variants of GFP. Fluorescent Tagging. Intestinal nuclei from late L4 worms in an lmn-1p::GFP::LMN-1 transgenic strain. The image is lmn-1 tagged endogenously with GFP.  Image courtesy of Dr. André Catic, Baylor College of Medicine.

Knockouts are the bread and butter of reverse genetic studies. They allow researchers to study the effects of the absence of a particular gene, protein segment, amino acid, or regulatory element, thereby enabling the researcher to determine their function. Gene knockouts are a commonly used tool for biologists to understand gene function. Examination of phenotypes when the gene is deleted can reveal insights into what role that gene plays in the organism.

Extrachromosomal arrays enable your desired construct to be expressed without being integrated into the genome. Using extrachromosomal arrays, you can choose to express a variety of configurations of transgenes, such as a:

The MosSCI service enables you to integrate your desired sequence as a single copy insertion at a designated locus in the C. elegans genome. This is advantageous as it allows you to leave the native gene unmodified. With the MosSCI service you can: