Editing Bacterial artificial chromosome (section)

==Disease modeling==

===Inherited===
BACs are now being utilized to a greater extent in modeling genetic disease, often alongside [[transgenic]] mice. BACs have been useful in this field as complex genes may have several regulatory sequences upstream of the encoding sequence, including various [[promoter (biology)|promoter]] sequences that will govern a gene's expression level. BACs have been used to some degree of success with mice when studying neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease or as in the case of [[aneuploidy]] associated with Down syndrome. There have also been instances when they have been used to study specific [[oncogene]]s associated with cancers. They are transferred over to these genetic disease models by electroporation/transformation, transfection with a suitable virus or microinjection. BACs can also be utilized to detect genes or large sequences of interest and then used to map them onto the human chromosome using BAC [[DNA microarray|arrays]]. BACs are preferred for these kind of genetic studies because they accommodate much larger sequences without the risk of rearrangement, and are therefore more stable than other types of cloning vectors.{{citation needed|date=January 2011}}

===Infectious===
The genomes of several large [[DNA viruses]] and [[RNA viruses]] have been cloned as BACs. These constructs are referred to as "infectious clones", as transfection of the BAC construct into host cells is sufficient to initiate viral infection. The infectious property of these BACs has made the study of many viruses such as the [[Herpesviridae|herpesviruses]], [[Poxviridae|poxviruses]] and [[Coronaviridae|coronaviruses]] more accessible.<ref name="Almazan2000">{{cite journal | vauthors = Almazán F, González JM, Pénzes Z, Izeta A, Calvo E, Plana-Durán J, Enjuanes L | title = Engineering the largest RNA virus genome as an infectious bacterial artificial chromosome | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 97 | issue = 10 | pages = 5516–21 | date = May 2000 | pmid = 10805807 | pmc = 25860 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.97.10.5516 | doi-access = free }}</ref><ref name="Domi2002">{{cite journal | vauthors = Domi A, Moss B | title = Cloning the vaccinia virus genome as a bacterial artificial chromosome in Escherichia coli and recovery of infectious virus in mammalian cells | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 99 | issue = 19 | pages = 12415–20 | date = September 2002 | pmid = 12196634 | pmc = 129459 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.192420599 | bibcode = 2002PNAS...9912415D | doi-access = free }}</ref><ref name="Messerle1997">{{cite journal | vauthors = Messerle M, Crnkovic I, Hammerschmidt W, Ziegler H, Koszinowski UH | title = Cloning and mutagenesis of a herpesvirus genome as an infectious bacterial artificial chromosome | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | volume = 94 | issue = 26 | pages = 14759–63 | date = December 1997 | pmid = 9405686 | pmc = 25110 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.94.26.14759 | bibcode = 1997PNAS...9414759M | doi-access = free }}</ref> Molecular studies of these viruses can now be achieved using genetic approaches to mutate the BAC while it resides in bacteria. Such genetic approaches rely on either linear or circular targeting vectors to carry out [[homologous recombination]].<ref name="FeederleBartlett2010">{{cite journal | vauthors = Feederle R, Bartlett EJ, Delecluse HJ | title = Epstein-Barr virus genetics: talking about the BAC generation | journal = Herpesviridae | volume = 1 | issue = 1 | pages = 6 | date = December 2010 | pmid = 21429237 | pmc = 3063228 | doi = 10.1186/2042-4280-1-6 | doi-access = free }}</ref>