Talk:Knockout mouse

picture
The picture on this page labeled "knockout mice" is simply a picture of two mice. The same picture is on the Mouse page with the same label. There's really nothing in the picture that suggests that they're anything other than regular mice. A better picture would be of a knockout mouse that shows a physical phenotype. Realisticradical (talk) 16:08, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

resistance to antiobiotic - mistake?
In step 1 of procedure section: a gene that normal mice don't have and that transfers resistance to a certain antibiotic Mice aren't sensitive to antibiotics - has this bit been copied in error from an article on bacterial gene knockout? RupertMillard (Talk) 15:46, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * it's not too well-explained, but it's not a mistake. antibiotics like Neomycin and G418 are used as selectable markers because they also kill eukaryotic cells (including mouse embryonic stem cells which are used for this procedure).  i've also always been confused by the fact that they're called antibiotics but that's what people use and i can tell you first-hand that they kill mammalian cells too.  the gene usually used is neomycin phosphotransferase which allows the cells to metabolize the antibiotic and thereby confers resistance.  Roadnottaken 16:18, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * That was quick! Thank you for answering my question. RupertMillard (Talk) 16:31, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

It needs to be clarified as it seems to contradict the article on 'antibiotics' which states: An antibiotic is a chemical compound that inhibits or abolishes the growth of microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, or protozoans. The term originally referred to any agent with biological activity against living organisms; however, "antibiotic" now is used to refer to substances with anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-parasitical activity. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.103.79.135 (talk) 21:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

MCOTW
Just a few quick notes. The article lacking full explanations, and no proper references. Subject is highly commercial so NPOV is going to be hard to get right... Feel we are missing some sections ... history? Leevanjackson (talk) 23:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Fancy names
KO mouse lines do NOT get fancy names. The NHGRI link provides the information that I just deleted (on Methusalah -the name of a price, not a strain- and Frantic), but is just plain wrong. Correct naming information can be found on the site of The Jackson Laboratory (http://jaxmice.jax.org/findmice/index.html). Some older spontaneous mutants got some fancy names, especially those with cerebellar mutations (staggerer, stargazer, hotfoot, etc), but these nowadays also go by more mundane names. --Crusio (talk) 08:41, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

The link provided above is to the order site for mice from The Jackson Laboratory. This site does use official nomenclature, but the actual guidelines established by the International Committee on Standardized Nomenclature for Mice can be found at the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) web site: (http://www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen/index.shtml). Cjb 62 (talk) 23:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Unattributed quotation
I found the following quote at What are the drawbacks of knockout mice? While knockout mice technology represents a valuable research tool, some important limitations exist. About 15 percent of gene knockouts are developmentally lethal, which means that the genetically altered embryos cannot grow into adult mice. The lack of adult mice limits studies to embryonic development and often makes it more difficult to determine a gene's function in relation to human health. In some instances, the gene may serve a different function in adults than in developing embryos.

Knocking out a gene also may fail to produce an observable change in a mouse or may even produce different characteristics from those observed in humans in which the same gene is inactivated. For example, mutations in the p53 gene are associated with more than half of human cancers and often lead to tumors in a particular set of tissues. However, when the p53 gene is knocked out in mice, the animals develop tumors in a different array of tissues.

Either this website is quoting the Wikipedia article (section "Limitations") or vice versa. Mirughaz (talk) 21:00, 7 May 2009 (UTC) 21:38, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * My bet would be that we copied it from them.... Not copyvio, though, because their copyright statement clearly says that all of their site is in the public domain. But perhaps we should add a reference to that webpage to this article. --Crusio (talk)

This material, from a NIH website, was added to Wikipedia on 25 September 2006. It would be interesting if they are lifting material from Wikipedia. I added quotes.Mirughaz (talk) 00:40, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Knockout mouse. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100611201320/http://molpharm.wisc.edu/Faculty/fac_pages/gould/Pub12754522.pdf to http://molpharm.wisc.edu/Faculty/fac_pages/gould/Pub12754522.pdf

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:58, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge?
Although this article is longer/more thorough, some of the same information is found in Gene knockout and in several related articles, for example Gene knockdown, Gene knockin, and Conditional gene knockout. I wonder if we really need so many articles with very similar information. --Hordaland (talk) 18:46, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 21:20, 29 April 2016 (UTC)