A cre-expression cassette, followed by a polyadenylation sequence, was inserted into BAC clone RP24-318N16 at the initiating ATG codon of the first coding exon of the Chrna5 gene so that cre expression is driven by the regulatory sequences of the BAC gene. This BAC clone generated by the Gene Expression Nervous System Atlas (GENSAT) Project was furtehr subcloned to include only Chrna5 and deleting Chrna3 and Chrna4 genes on opposit strand of the original BAC clone. The resulting BAC was used to generate three independent lines. Transgenic line 3 was used for all analyses.