Background
Although the rat is extensively used as a laboratory model, the inability to utilize germ line-competent rat embryonic stem (ES) cells has been a major drawback for studies that
Significance
The efficient and rapid generation of gene knockout rats shows that using ZFN technology is a new strategy for creating gene-targeted rat models of human diseases. In addition, the X-SCID rats that were established in this study will be valuable in vivo tools for evaluating drug treatment or gene therapy as well as model systems for examining the treatment of xenotransplanted malignancies.