A FRT flanked neo cassette with a 5' loxP site was inserted within intron 1 and an additional loxP site was inserted within intron 2 by homologous recombination. The selection cassette and exon 2 were removed by flpe and cre mediated recombination. Deletion of Exon 2 is expected to cause the loss of the domain essential for DNA binding and protein interactions and introduces a frame shift resulting in two stop codons in Exon 3 and early termination of translation. (J:163063)