PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Tyler Joseph Dause AU - Elizabeth Diana Kirby TI - Poor Concordance of Floxed Sequence Recombination in Single Neural Stem Cells: Implications for Cell Autonomous Studies AID - 10.1523/ENEURO.0470-19.2020 DP - 2020 Mar 01 TA - eneuro PG - ENEURO.0470-19.2020 VI - 7 IP - 2 4099 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/2/ENEURO.0470-19.2020.short 4100 - http://www.eneuro.org/content/7/2/ENEURO.0470-19.2020.full SO - eNeuro2020 Mar 01; 7 AB - To manipulate target gene function in specific adult cell populations, tamoxifen (TAM)-dependent CreERT2 is widely used to drive inducible, site-specific recombination of loxP flanked sequences. In studies of cell autonomous target gene function, it is common practice to combine these CreERT2-lox systems with a ubiquitously expressed stop-floxed fluorescent reporter gene to identify single cells supposedly undergoing target gene recombination. Here, we studied the reliability of using Cre-induced recombination of one gene to predict recombination in another gene at the single-cell level in adult hippocampal neural stem and progenitor cells (NSPCs). Using both probabilistic predictions in a generic experimental paradigm, as well as a mouse model with two separate stop-floxed reporters plus a Nestin promoter-driven CreERT2, we found that, in individual cells, recombination of one gene was a poor predictor of recombination in another. This poor concordance in floxed sequence recombination across genes suggests that use of stop-floxed reporters to investigate cell autonomous gene function may not be universally reliable and could lead to false conclusions.