Making Immortalized Cell Lines from Embryonic Mouse Kidney

Immortalized cell lines derived from embryonic mouse kidneys are useful tools for exploring signaling pathways, morphogenetic mechanisms, and gene function in renal development: they also provide a means for efficient first-round screening of panels of small molecules intended to combat renal pathologies such as the development of cysts, and such cell line-based screening can allow a valuable reduction in the numbers of animals needed for a given line of research. This chapter presents a simple method for generating cell lines from the “Immortomouse,” which carries a temperature-sensitive SV40 antigen, under the control of an interferon-regulated promoter.