NIH Proposes to Exempt Certain Low-Risk Transgenic Rodent Breeding Experiments from the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules

NIH Proposes to Exempt Certain Low-Risk Transgenic Rodent Breeding Experiments from the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules – Based on suggestions from the scientific community, as well as input from the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee, the NIH Office of Biotechnology Activities (OBA) has published a proposal to revise the NIH Guidelines to exempt the breeding of well-characterized transgenic rodents that can be maintained under Biosafety Level (BL) 1 conditions. This exemption would not apply, however, to the breeding of rodents that have a gene encoding more than fifty percent of an exogenous eukaryotic virus or those transgenic rodents in which the transgene is under the control of a gammaretroviral promoter.