Generating knockout rats by transposon mutagenesis in spermatogonial stem cells.

Disrupting genes in the rat on a genome-wide scale will allow the investigation of many biological processes linked to human health. Here we used transposon-mediated mutagenesis to knock out genes in rat spermatogonial stem cells. Given the capacity of the testis to support spermatogenesis from thousands of transplanted, genetically manipulated spermatogonia, this approach paves a way for high-throughput functional genomic studies in the laboratory rat.