Mice and humans: chromosome engineering and its application to functional genomics.

Functional modeling of human genes and diseases requires suitable mammalian model organisms. For its genetic malleability, the mouse is likely to continue to play a major role in defining basic genetic traits and complex pathological disorders. Recently, gene targeting techniques have been extended towards developing new engineering strategies for generating extensive lesions and rearrangements in mouse chromosomes. While these advances create new opportunities to address similar aberrations observed in human diseases, they also open new ways of scaling-up mutagenesis projects that try to catalogue and annotate cellular functions of mammalian genes.