Lox stop lox tdtomato mice

C57BL/6 mice harboring a loxp flanked exon 1 of the Uqcrq gene (encodes QPC) were generated by Ozgene. Mice were genotyped using the following primers: 1. 5’-CTTCCGCTCCTCCCGGAAGT-3’, 2. 5’-TTCCCAAACTCGCGGCCCATG-3’ and 3. 5’-CAATTCCAGCCAACAGTCCC-3’ which allow identification of the QPC wild-type, loxp-flanked, and excised alleles. QPC-floxed mice were crossed with Cdh5Cre^ERT2 mice, which have a Tamoxifen-inducible Cre allele under the endothelial-specific Cadherin 5 (Cdh5, aka VE-cadherin) promoter ^{29 (link)}. The Cre allele was detected by using the following primers: 1. 5’-AATCTCCCACCGTCAGTACG-3’, and 2. 5’-CGTTTTCTGAGCATACCTGGA-3’. Lox-stop-lox TdTomato mice were purchased from Jackson (stock no. 007914). Tamoxifen stock was prepared by dissolving Tamoxifen (Sigma) in corn oil by shaking at 37˚C for 2 hours. Tamoxifen was administered to mouse pups orally by dropping 2.5μL of 40mg/mL Tamoxifen stock into the mouth using a p10 pipet. Pups were given 5 doses of Tamoxifen from P0-P4 at a dose of 100μg/pup/day. For tumor angiogenesis assays, adult mice were fed Tamoxifen chow (Envigo) for 2 weeks prior to tumor injection and remained fed with Tamoxifen chow for the entirety of the experiment. All animal procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Northwestern University.