Madisen, L. et al. Neuron 85, 942–958 (2015).

Genetic targeting is a reliable strategy to manipulate or record neural activity in vivo. Madisen et al. expand the toolkit available to researchers working on the mouse brain by establishing the TIGRE locus as a docking site for transgene insertion. This development represents a standardized platform for the expression of reporters or drivers for neural manipulations. The researchers also generated tools for intersectional targeting strategies that rely on Dre or Flp recombinases, or on the transcriptional activator tTA, in addition to Cre recombinase. With these approaches, expression patterns can be refined better than with traditional targeting strategies with a single recombinase. To complement these targeting approaches, the researchers generated a number of compatible reporter lines for fluorescent labeling, calcium or voltage sensing, or optogenetic manipulation.