Use of the tetracycline-controlled transcriptional silencer (tTS) to eliminate transgene leak in inducible overexpression transgenic mice

The doxycycline-inducible reverse tetracycline transactivator (rtTA) is fre quently used to overexpress transgenes in a temporally regulated fashion in vivo, These systems are, however, often limited by the levels of transgene expression in the absence of dox administration. The tetracycline-controll ed transcriptional silencer (tTS), a fusion protein containing the tet repr essor and the KRAB-AB domain of the kid-1 transcriptional repressor, is inh ibited by doxycycline, We hypothesized that tTS would tighten control of tr ansgene expression in rtTA-based systems. To test this hypothesis we genera ted mice in which the CC10 promoter targeted tTS to the lung, bred these mi ce with CC10-rtTA-interleukin 13 (IL-13) mice in which IL-13 was overexpres sed in an inducible lung-specific fashion, and compared the IL-13 productio n and phenotypes of parental mice and the triple transgenic CC10-rtTA/tTS-I L-13 progeny of these crosses. In the CC10-rtTA-IL-13 mice, IL-13, mucus me taplasia, inflammation, alveolar enlargement, and enhanced lung volumes wer e noted at base line and increased greatly after doxycycline administration . In the triple transgenic tTS animals, IL-13 and the IL-13-induced phenoty pe could not be appreciated without doxycycline. In contrast, tTS did not a lter the induction of IL-13 or the generation of the IL-13 phenotype by dox ycycline, Thus, tTS effectively eliminated the baseline leak without alteri ng the inducibility of rtTA-regulated transgenes in vivo. Optimal "off/on" regulation of transgene expression can be accomplished with the combined us e of tTS and rtTA.