Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP)

Since 2006, scientists around the world have been working together to generate a targeted knockout mutation for every gene in the mouse genome.

The Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP) is providing critical tools for understanding gene function and the genetic causes of human diseases.

Coordinated by the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC), an international coalition will produce and phenotype a total of 5,000 knockout mice by 2016. The National Institutes of Health has funded three “KOMP2” centers in the United States, including one at The Jackson Laboratory, to work together on the immense task of producing and phenotyping these mice.  We are pleased to contribute to this international effort establishing a global resource of knockout mice and related database of gene function.

  • High throughput production

    The KOMP Production Center draws upon our 80-plus years of experience delivering top-quality models in producing germline-competent chimeras and subsequent mouse cohorts.

  • Phenotyping pipeline design

    Broad phenotypic characterization of emerging mouse models will add important value and greatly enhance their utility to the scientific community.

About the Knockout Mouse Project

The use of knockout mice as tools for studying a specific gene’s function within a physiological or disease system grew during the 1990s as many laboratories constructed models for their own research.  After the mouse genome was sequenced in 2002, scientists realized the tremendous potential a full library of mouse knockouts could provide for studying gene function and human disease, given the genomic similarity of the two organisms. But the creation of such a library was too large an undertaking for any one institution or laboratory to conduct; a collaborative effort would be needed.

A coordinated venture would also create efficiency (saving money and time), improve availability, and ensure reproducibility of data through the standardization of models. In 2007, the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) was formed with the support of the European Commission, the National Institutes of Health and Genome Canada. The process of creating embryonic stem cell lines for knockouts of each of the approximately 21,000 protein-coding genes in the mouse genome was begun through four programs: The Knockout Mouse Project (KOMP), the European Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Program (EUCOMM), the North American Conditional Mouse Mutagenesis Project (NorComm), and the Texas A&M Institute for Genomic Medicine (TIGM).

Through the sharing of technologies, coordination of production plans and joint resolution of issues related to archiving and distributing resources, the IKMC has had great success and will soon reach its goal.

KOMP2

With ES cell lines already created for more than two-thirds of the mouse genome, in 2011 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched the second phase of this project, the Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Program, or KOMP2: generating and phenotyping mice for over 5,000 knockout ES cell lines.  Phenotyping, which will measure biological information from appearance and behavior to biochemical characteristics, will employ a standardized battery of analyses to obtain consistent data on traits affected by the deleted genes. 

The NIH has funded three KOMP2 centers to convert the ES cells into mice and rigorously document their phenotypes:

  • The Jackson Laboratory
  • The BaSH Consortium (Baylor College of Medicine, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and MRC Harwell)
  • The DTCC Consortium (University of California at Davis, The Toronto Center for Phenogenomics, Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) and Charles River Laboratories)

All of the data generated by the KOMP2 program are collected and made public by a central Data Coordination Center Database located at EBI-Hinxton, with support from Mouse Genome Informatics.

How to cite this resource

The JAX KOMP2 program is funded by multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health, through the NIH Common Fund.

  • Please acknowledge U42OD011185 in research using mice produced by the JAX KOMP program (High-throughput production and cryopreservation of knockout mice).
  • Please acknowledge U54HG006332 in research benefiting from data provided by the JAX KOMP Phenotyping Center

Faculty & Staff

Robert E. Braun, Ph.D. Professor

Robert E. Braun, Ph.D.

Cynthia Carpenter Alumni

Cynthia Carpenter

Vivek Kumar, Ph.D. Associate Professor

Vivek Kumar, Ph.D.

Steve Murray, Ph.D. Associate Professor

Steve Murray, Ph.D.

Patsy Nishina, Ph.D. Professor

Patsy Nishina, Ph.D.

Jacqui White, Ph.D. Director

Jacqui White, Ph.D.

Selected publications

Adams D, Baldock R, Bhattacharya S, Copp AJ, Dickinson M, Greene ND, Henkelman M, Justice M, Mohun T, Murray SA, Pauws E, Raess M, Rossant J, Weaver T, West D. 2013. Bloomsbury report on mouse embryo phenotyping: recommendations from the IMPC workshop on embryonic lethal screening. Dis Model Mech 6(3):571-9. PMCID: PMC3701224

Taft RA, Low BE, Byers SL, Murray SA, Kutny P, Wiles MV. 2013. The Perfect Host: a mouse host embryo facilitating more efficient germ line transmission of genetically modified embryonic stem cells. PLoS ONE 8(7):e67826. PMCID: PMC3699516