Generation of a tetracycline regulated mouse model of MYC-induced T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The tetracycline regulatory system provides a tractable strategy to interrogate the role of oncogenes in the initiation and maintenance of tumorigenesis through both spatial and temporal control of expression. This approach has several potential advantages over conventional methods to generate genetically engineered mouse models. First, continuous constitutive overexpression of an oncogene can be lethal to the host impeding further study. Second, constitutive overexpression fails to model adult onset of disease. Third, constitutive deletion does not permit, whereas conditional overexpression of an oncogene enables the study of the consequences of restoring expression of an oncogene back to endogenous levels. Fourth, the conditional activation of oncogenes enables examination of specific and/or developmental state-specific consequences. Hence, by allowing precise control of when and where a gene is expressed, the tetracycline regulatory system provides an ideal approach for the study of putative oncogenes in both the initiation and maintenance of tumorigenesis. In this protocol, we describe the methods involved in the development of a conditional mouse model of MYC-induced T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.