Prospects of EGF transgenic mice researches

Abstract

Genetic engineering in mice has proven to be a powerful tool for studying the specificity, complementarity and redundancy in the signalling cascades by altering the structure or expression of a single gene or a set of genes, from the ligands themselves to the specific receptors to the downstream signalling players. These models have provided a wealth of information about the effects of a number of oncogenes and growth factors. Transgenic and gene-targeted mouse lines have been used extensively to study the function of the EGFR and its ligands, insulin-like growth factor (IGF), their receptors and binding proteins. This mini-review highlights some of the major recent findings pertinent to the EGF and IGF-I/IGFBPS transgenic model. This mini-review summarizes the current knowledge about the actions of EGF and IGFBP in vivo based on the presently established transgenic mice. We focus on results obtained from the application of transgenic and knockout models to determine the roles of EGF, IGFs in the regulation of reproduction and growth development.