Facility Accreditation:  All mice for project1 were raised in the Research Animal Facility at The Jackson Laboratory. All mice for project 2 are being maintained at UConn Health. Both Jackson Laboratory and UConn Health are accredited by the American Association for the Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) and is registered with the US Department of Agriculture as a Research Facility.

Husbandry: Pedigreed mice are group housed (up to 5, depending on body weight) in polycarbonate cages in individually ventilated cages. Sterilized White Pine shavings are used for bedding. Cages and water bottles are changed and washed every week. Water is acidified with HCl to a pH of 2.8-3.2 for retardation of bacterial growth and is freely available. All mice are fed ad libitum, and are fed sterilized NIH31 diet containing 6% fat, 18% protein, Ca:P of 1.17:0.93, plus vitamin and mineral fortification (Cat # 5K52, LabDiet).

Knockout mice: “The Repository,” a core facility at The Jackson Laboratory, is tasked with reanimating the clones and generating the mice for the KOMP2 Phenotyping Center and thus we will obtain our breeding stock mice from the same sources as the KOMP2 project. For each transgenic line, we obtain 1-4 females and 1-3 male mice from the Repository to be used as breeding stock. The breeder mice obtained are homozygous for the null allele for each gene to be studied, however at the inception of this project, for some lines, breeder mice heterozygous for the null allele for each gene to be studied were supplied. All strains maintained in our mouse colony are either pair-mated or trio-mated for production of required experimental animals. Weaning is routinely carried out when litters reach 21-28 days of age, depending on the strain. For all of the lines obtained as homozygous stock, all offspring will be obligate homozygotes for the transgenic allele, and can be used directly for subsequent phenotyping. For lines obtained as heterozygous carriers: 1/4 of the offspring will be wild type for the transgenic allele and will not be useful for this study, 1/2 of the mice will be heterozygous and 1/4 will be homozygous for the transgene. At this time, heterozygous animals are not phenotyped. For the lines obtained as heterozygous breeders, a second round of homozygous by homozygous breeders were set up when ever possible, to generate the experimental animals. Control mice:
The C57BL/6NJ strain (B6/N, www.jax.org Stock number: 005304) is the background strain for the KOMP program and mice of this strain are being used as controls. Like the experimental mice, the B6/N controls are bred in our own dedicated vivarium space and as such experience the same environment as the experimental mice. The B6/N mice are trio-mated for the production of required experimental animals. Weaning is routinely carried out when litters reach 21-22 days of age. Breeding stock for the B6/N mice are retired after they have produced 6-8 litters and breeding stock is refreshed from the commercial JAX C57BL/6NJ colony every 2-3 generations to minimize genetic drift with in the colony. Cohorts of 10 male and 10 female B6/N are collected every month for use and controls (12 cohorts of controls per annum).

Control Mice:  The C57BL/6NJ strain (B6/N, The Jackson Laboratory Stock number: 005304) is the background strain for the KOMP program and mice of this strain are being used as controls. Like the experimental mice, the B6/N controls are bred in our own dedicated vivarium space and as such experience the same environment as the experimental mice. The B6/N mice are trio-mated for the production of required experimental animals. Weaning is routinely carried out when litters reach 21-22 days of age. Breeding stock for the B6/N mice are retired after they have produced 6-8 litters and breeding stock is refreshed from the commercial JAX C57BL/6NJ colony every 2-3 generations to minimize genetic drift with in the colony. Cohorts of 10 male and 10 female B6/N are collected every month for use and controls (12 cohorts of controls per annum).