Cre and CreER mouse strains are powerful tools that have proven invaluable for investigating the function of genes and for the fate-mapping of cell populations. The fidelity of these systems however are becoming more and more contested. In this issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Van Hove et al. and Chappell-Maor et al. carefully dissect the cellular specificities of two commonly used CreER mouse strains for the study of CNS macrophages; Cx3cr1CreER and Sall1CreER . Both studies elegantly highlight that CreER strains, as well as the "floxed" allele to be targeted, need to be carefully selected and properly characterized in order to ensure reproducible and robust data and interpretations. These studies are a cautionary tale for this technology, but also highlight that we must continuously question and improve our experimental approaches.

中文翻译：

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停止混乱：诱导型Cre / loxP系统的特异性和泄漏性。

Cre和CreER小鼠品系是功能强大的工具，已被证明对于研究基因的功能和确定细胞群的命运具有不可估量的价值。但是，这些系统的保真度变得越来越有争议。在本期《欧洲免疫学杂志》上，Van Hove等人。和Chappell-Maor等。仔细解剖两种常用的CreER小鼠品系的细胞特异性，以研究CNS巨噬细胞；Cx3cr1CreER和Sall1CreER。两项研究都优雅地强调了CreER菌株以及要靶向的“固定”等位基因，需要仔细选择和适当表征，以确保可重复且可靠的数据和解释。这些研究是这项技术的一个警示故事，