Lymphomas and plasmacytomas in transgenic mice involving Bcl2, myc and v-Abl

Abstract

During the past twelve years, our laboratory has been analyzing the tumorigenic potential of oncogenes in the lymphoid system of transgenic mice (for reviews see Adams and Cory 1991, 1992). Tissue specific expression of the oncogenes in these animals was achieved by including in the transgene constructs an enhancer sequence (Eμ) from the mouse immunoglobulin heavy chain locus. In most individual strains resulting from the introduction of such constructs, expression was confined to the B lymphoid lineage while a small minority of strains showed expression in both T and B lineages or only in T cells. The pattern for each strain has proved to be stable over many generations of breeding.