Foamy virus for efficient gene transfer in regeneration studies

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Molecular studies of appendage regeneration have been hindered by the lack of a stable and efficient means of transferring exogenous genes. We therefore sought an efficient integrating virus system that could be used to study limb and tail regeneration in salamanders.

RESULTS: We show that replication-deficient foamy virus (FV) vectors efficiently transduce cells in two different regeneration models in cell culture and in vivo. Injection of EGFP-expressing FV but not lentivirus vector particles into regenerating limbs and tail resulted in widespread expression that persisted throughout regeneration and reamputation pointing to the utility of FV for analyzing adult phenotypes in non-mammalian models. Furthermore, tissue specific transgene expression is achieved using FV vectors during limb regeneration.

CONCLUSIONS: FV vectors are efficient mean of transferring genes into axolotl limb/tail and infection persists throughout regeneration and reamputation. This is a nontoxic method of delivering genes into axolotls in vivo/ in vitro and can potentially be applied to other salamander species.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number17
Number of pages8
JournalBMC Developmental Biology
Volume13
Publication statusPublished - 3 May 2013
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

researchoutputwizard legacy.publication#55855
PubMed 23641815
PubMedCentral PMC3655922
Scopus 84876958671
ORCID /0000-0002-0320-4223/work/150884949
ORCID /0000-0003-1802-5145/work/166764645

Keywords

Keywords

  • Animals, Cell Line, Gene Transfer Techniques, Genetic Vectors, Humans, Regeneration/genetics, Spumavirus/genetics, Urodela