Light up the embryos: knock-in reporter generation for mouse developmental biology

Developmental biology seeks to understand the sophisticated regulated process through which a single cell – a fertilized egg – generates a highly organized organism. The most effective way to reveal the nature of these processes is to follow single cells and cell lineages in real-time. Recent advances in imaging equipment, fluorescent tags and computational tools have made long term multi-color imaging of cells and embryos possible. However, there is still one major challenging for achieving live imaging of mammalian embryos- the generation of embryos carrying reporters that recapitulate the endogenous expression pattern of marker genes. Recent developments of genome editing technology played important roles in enabling efficient generation of reporter mouse models. This mini review discusses recent developments of technologies for efficiently generate knock-in reporter mice and the application of these models in live imaging development. With these developments, we are starting to realize the long-sought promises of realtime analysis of mammalian development.