Clinical Chemical Screen

Coordinator:		Prof. Dr. Eckhard Wolf
Institution:		Lehrstuhl für Molekulare Tierzucht und Biotechnologie, LMU München
Homepage:		www.lmb.uni-muenchen.de/groups/

Numerous genetic modifications exert a primary or secondary influence on essential metabolic processes or organ functions. This typically affects clinical-chemical and/or hematological blood parameters. The team of the clinical-chemistry screen at the German Mouse Clinic has established a broad spectrum of diagnostic methods. Their application allows the determination of a wide variety of essential laboratory diagnostic parameters with high precision and high throughput. Thus hematological changes, deregulation of metabolic pathways, disturbances of electrolyte homeostasis and/or affected organ functions can be identified. In this way, many mouse mutant models have successfully been characterized and often also the systemic effects of mutations became obvious. Hence, the clinical-chemical and hematological analysis provides essential information on direct and indirect effects of genetic modifications in the respective mutant mouse line and is a central part of the comprehensive phenotypic characterization of mutant mouse lines at the German Mouse Clinic. Besides the primary phenotyping, we are especially interested in the characterization of mouse models for renal, hematological and/or endocrine disorders.