Transgenesis and web resources in quail
- Monash University, Australia
- Aix Marseille University, France
- CSIRO Health & Biosecurity, Australia
- University of Lyon 1 UCBL, France
- Pasteur Institute, CNRS UMR3738, France
Abstract
Due to its amenability to manipulations, to live observation and its striking similarities to mammals, the chicken embryo has been one of the major animal models in biomedical research. Although it is technically possible to genome-edit the chicken, its long generation time (6 months to sexual maturity) makes it an impractical lab model and has prevented it widespread use in research. The Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica) is an attractive alternative, very similar to the chicken, but with the decisive asset of a much shorter generation time (1.5 months). In recent years, transgenic quail lines have been described. Most of them were generated using replication-deficient lentiviruses, a technique that presents diverse limitations. Here, we introduce a novel technology to perform transgenesis in quail, based on the in vivo transfection of plasmids in circulating Primordial Germ Cells (PGCs). This technique is simple, efficient and allows using the infinite variety of genome engineering approaches developed in other models. Furthermore, we present a website centralizing quail genomic and technological information to facilitate the design of genome-editing strategies, showcase the past and future transgenic quail lines and foster collaborative work within the avian community.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files
Article and author information
Author details
Christophe Marcelle
Funding
AFM-Téléthon (Research grant)
- Christophe Marcelle
Stem Cells Australia (Research grant)
- Olivier Serralbo
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication
Ethics
Animal experimentation: All procedures were approved by a Monash University Animal Ethics Committee (ERM ID 15002, ERM ID 18809) in accordance with the Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes (8th Edition, 2013).
Copyright
© 2020, Serralbo et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Transgenesis and web resources in quail
eLife 9:e56312.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.56312
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