RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Exploring the elephant: histopathology in high-throughput phenotyping of mutant mice
JF Disease Models & Mechanisms
JO Dis Models Mech
FD The Company of Biologists Limited
SP 19
OP 25
DO 10.1242/dmm.008334
VO 5
IS 1
A1 Schofield, Paul N.
A1 Vogel, Peter
A1 Gkoutos, Georgios V.
A1 Sundberg, John P.
YR 2012
UL http://dmm.biologists.org/content/5/1/19.abstract
AB Recent advances in gene knockout techniques and the in vivo analysis of mutant mice, together with the advent of large-scale projects for systematic mouse mutagenesis and genome-wide phenotyping, have allowed the creation of platforms for the most complete and systematic analysis of gene function ever undertaken in a vertebrate. The development of high-throughput phenotyping pipelines for these and other large-scale projects allows investigators to search and integrate large amounts of directly comparable phenotype data from many mutants, on a genomic scale, to help develop and test new hypotheses about the origins of disease and the normal functions of genes in the organism. Histopathology has a venerable history in the understanding of the pathobiology of human and animal disease, and presents complementary advantages and challenges to in vivo phenotyping. In this review, we present evidence for the unique contribution that histopathology can make to a large-scale phenotyping effort, using examples from past and current programmes at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals and The Jackson Laboratory, and critically assess the role of histopathology analysis in high-throughput phenotyping pipelines.