RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Measuring physiological responses to stressors using a novel Hmox1 reporter mouse JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 098467 DO 10.1101/098467 A1 Michael McMahon A1 Shaohong Ding A1 Lourdes P Acosta-Jimenez A1 Tania G. Frangova A1 Colin J. Henderson A1 C. Roland Wolf YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/05/098467.abstract AB Hmox1 protein holds great promise as a biomarker of organismal health as it is highly expressed in stressed or damaged cells. However, documenting Hmox1 expression patterns has thus far only been feasible in simple model organisms with limited relevance to humans. We now report a new Hmox1 reporter line that makes it possible to access this information in mice, the premiere model system for studying human disease and toxicology. Using a state-of-the-art strategy, we express multiple complementary reporter molecules from the murine Hmox1 locus, including firefly luciferase to allow long-term, non-invasive imaging of Hmox1 expression, and β-galactosidase for high-resolution mapping of expression patterns post-mortem. We validate the model by confirming the absence of haplo-insufficiency effects, the fidelity of reporter expression, and its responsiveness to oxidative and inflammatory stimuli. In addition to providing blueprints for Hmox1 expression in mice that provide novel biological insights for follow-up, this work paves the way for the broad application of this model to regulatory toxicology studies and, also, pre-clinical investigations into human degenerative diseases.