Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to collect original research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on knock-out mice with no apparent phenotype for the scientific community. While mouse models presenting a strong phenotype are often a key to elucidate any in vivo significance of a biological process, many models do not present a detectable phenotype. Publication of the latter is not always possible, and no good estimate exists as to how often those carefully-prepared and analyzed models are just unavailable to the scientific community. With this Special Issue, we want to create an easily-accessible resource that describes bona fide knock-out models with absent or very minor phenotypes, but that will reveal otherwise-unexpected genetic robustness.

This probably-ample repository will give invaluable information to researchers working in similar fields, and will help to broaden our understanding of complex models and potential pitfalls involved. We believe that this collection of open-access high-quality reports will, not only save time for researchers, but also will allow access to previously-inaccessible results.

Potential emphasis should focus on different categories of mouse models, and include, but not limited to, the following:

• Knock-out mice with no apparent phenotype
• Absence of phenotypic rescue by in vivo complementation
• Genetic robustness (genetic redundancy between paralogous and/or non-paralogous genes)
• Divergence between orthologous genes
• Impact of genetic background
• Reversion by mitotic recombination or viral sequence excision

Dr. Florent Hubé
Dr. Philip Hublitz
Dr. Jean-François Ouimette
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. J is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Generation and analysis of transgenic animal models
• Knock-out mouse
• Conditional alleles
• No apparent phenotype
• Unexpected lack of phenotype
• Genetic robustness
• Lack of phenotypic rescue