National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Epithelial Systems Biology Laboratory (ESBL)


Using the Conditional Allele Mouse Planner (CAMP)

Genotype Predictor

The Genotype Predictor is designed to provide the genotypes of each pup, their probabilities, and the number of pups associated with each genotype given the genotypes of the parents, number of female breeders, litter size, and degree of Mendelian transmission. CAMP allows the user to select parental genotypes from a menu of six user-defined alleles. (Defaults: Cre, Floxed, Tet, Gfp, Flp, and Frt.)

  1. Select the number of female breeders (# of female breeders) and the ratio of female-to-male breeders (# female:male) from the drop-down menus. The number of male breeders is chosen automatically based on these input parameters.
  2. Select the desired alleles (e.g., Cre, Floxed, Frt, Flp, Gfp, Tet, or User-defined) for the female breeders. For "User-defined", type in the allele of your choice. Next select the genotypes from the drop-down menus associated with each allele for both female and male breeders e.g., wt/wt (wild-type homozygous), wt/Cre (Cre heterozygous), or Cre/Cre (Cre homozygous).
  3. Select the expected litter size from the drop-down menu. Maximum litter size is 20.
  4. Optional: Select the degree of Mendelian inheritance from the drop-down menu. The default is set at 1.0 or 100% transmission for each allele and the X and Y chromosomes.
  5. Select the Run function to generate a list of genotypes, their frequencies, and the number of female and male offspring. This information will appear in the output table under the appropriate column headings. If desired, the user can sort the output by clicking on the appropriate column heading. Note: a genotype will appear below each allele heading; wt/wt is set as the default genotype.
  6. Select the Clear function to remove all data in the output box; doing so will not alter the input selections.
  7. Select the Copy function to copy all data from the output table; this information can then be pasted into an Excel spreadsheet or a text file for further manipulation.
  8. Note: Input data can be selected in any order and adjusted at anytime independent of other input data. This was designed to allow the user to rapidly identify the optimal parameters for the desired output, i.e., genotypes, frequencies, and number of pups.

Breeding Planner

The Breeding Planner is designed to provide an approximate estimate of the cost and timeline associated with generating the offspring using the input data from the Genotype Predictor. The costs associated with the following development milestones, i.e., “Birth Cost”, “Pre-Weaning Cost”, and “Post-Weaning Cost”, will appear below each category.

  1. Enter the breed start date (i.e. the date when the male breeders are placed in the same cage as the female breeders) using the calendar function. Be sure to select MONTH, DAY, and YEAR.
  2. Enter the days to conception. The days to conception is only an estimate and assumes that all female breeders in the same cage conceive at the same time. It was not intended to provide an exact time for conception. Rather, its sole purpose to provide a more realistic view of how many days are required to generate offspring from a given crossing.
  3. Enter the costs per cage in the cage cost per day.
  4. Select the Run function to generate values associated with each developmental milestone.
  5. Select the Clear function to clear all values from the Breeding Planner.
  6. The “litter size per female”, number of “female breeders”, and the total “number of pups” are provided in the Breeding Planner and were derived from the Genotype Predictor.
  7. Optional: If the costs associated with raising a particular genotype to breeding maturity are desired, then select the Copy function in the Genotype Predictor, open the Excel file CAMP Individual Genotype Costs, paste values in the grey highlighted area, and enter the Pre-weaning and Post-weaning costs from the Breeding Planner. The individual costs for each genotype will appear in the green highlighted area.

This program was created by J Hoffert, T Pisitkun, and RL Miller.  Contact us with questions or comments.

CAMP is also available for download as a compressed zip file (CAMPlanner.zip). After extracting the contents, open the CAMPlanner folder and double click on the CAMPlanner.jar file to start the program.
Be sure that your computer is running the latest version of Java available here.

If you use CAMP in any published work, please cite: Hoffert JD, Pisitkun T, Miller RL. Conditional Allele Mouse Planner (CAMP): software to facilitate the planning and design of breeding strategies involving mice with conditional alleles. Transgenic Res. 2011 Aug 26. [Epub ahead of print]