INFRAFRONTIER2020 project - Trans-national call: Specialised phenotyping

The INFRAFRONTIER mouse clinics offer the examination of mouse mutants using a broad and standardised phenotypic check-up covering key research areas such as behaviour, clinical chemistry, immunology, energy metabolism, and lung function amongst others. If phenotypes are uncovered by the primary assays, mouse mutants can be subjected to more detailed analyses in hypothesis driven and disease focussed phenotyping pipelines.

In this specialised phenotyping call we provide access to a comprehensive panel of phenotyping tests, relying on standardized and customized protocols in key therapeutic areas.

Induced secondary phenotyping screen under acute or more chronic inflammatory conditions

BIOMEDCODE: http://www.biomedcode.com/gr/en

BIOMEDCODE provides access to an induced secondary phenotyping screen under acute or more chronic inflammatory conditions. While primary phenotyping of mutant mouse lines can provide useful information on the involvement of genes in physiology, often their role in pathology can be only revealed when studied in a disease context or following a pathogenic trigger.  Such a trigger can be for example inflammation, which has been implicated in a number of pathologic conditions. To uncover gene function in pathologic processes we offer a specialised phenotyping screen under inflammatory conditions. The proposed screen involves the phenotypic analysis of mutant animals combined with one acute and one chronic inflammatory model.

The user’s research interests, the nature of the mutated gene and the strain of the mutant animal under investigation will dictate the selection of the most appropriate combination of one acute and one chronic model, to provide the most informative customized output for the user. Through this secondary screening of mutants under inflammatory and disease conditions, the user will be able to uncover the role of their mutant of interest in pathologic conditions.

Functional immune-phenotyping screen by mass cytometry

PHENOMIN-CIPHE: http://ciphe.marseille.inserm.fr/en/

The PHENOMIN-CIPHE mouse clinic provides access to its infrastructure and expertise for analysing mouse mutant lines through specialised functional immune-phenotyping by mass cytometry. To characterize the functional impact, on the immune system, of the invalidation or the overexpression of a gene of interest, cellular immune-phenotype profiling is required. This primary immunophenotyping screen, essentially based on an extracellular labelling, aims at quantifying the various cell populations present within a model by monitoring the expression of specific cell surface receptors in hematopoietic cells.

This first approach describing cellular heterogeneity does not assess the effector functions of immune cells. To this end, a more functional secondary immune-phenotyping screen is required and offered in this call.

Access to the mouse clinics and their specialised phenotyping screens will be granted based on scientific excellence and supports the development and in-depth characterisation of mouse models for investigating gene function and human pathophysiology.  INFRAFRONTIER will provide open access to all characterised disease models and phenotyping data.