<b>Hprt1Cre: A novel somatic chimeric mouse model for studying competitive cellular kinetics beyond the classical haematopoietic lineages</b>

Methodologies such as mixed bone marrow chimeras and adoptive transfers enable the direct comparison of cellular dynamics between cells of different genetic lineages. These methodologies are largely limited to populations of haematopoietic origin, restricting the ability to run competitive cellular kinetic experiments in disciplines beyond haematology and immunology.

Even within immunology, many immune cell types, including tissue-resident phagocytes such as microglia, arise from yolk sac progenitors and are not replenished from the haematopoietic system. As a result, new tools are required to enable competitive kinetic analysis in a broader range of cell types. To overcome this limitation, we have developed a somatic chimeric mouse model that exploits the ubiquitously expressed, X-linked housekeeping gene <i>Hprt1</i> to achieve mosaic Cre recombinase activity.