I hear you all, yes, we read your comments.
Yes, we know mice are not humans.
Look, I'm not the one doing the studies!
Ask the scientists!
OKAY I'll look!
Why DO we use mice?!
A lot of the time, when we're reporting on science here at DNews, the studies we're reading
are done with mice.
Mice have been used for more than 100 years in tons of scientific research.
Today, the laboratory mouse or Mus Musculus is used as a human analog in everything from
brain disease studies to social interaction studies, cancer, smoking, obesity, genetics
… so many things.
Scientists use mice because they are small, easy to care for, have a high reproduction
rate, and their genome has been sequenced.
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, there are over 450 inbred strains
of white lab mice which can be selected and customized for specific studies.
Mice have similar immune systems and metabolisms, have been inbred to minimize genetic differences
for different mice, and can be (or have been) genetically mutated so their DNA more closely
mimics humans.
Overall, researchers generally accept mice as good stand-ins for us.
But, as medicine drills deeper into the genetic code, they've discovered even though we look
the same on the surface, mice are still very different.
It’s already known that humans and mice share 70 percent of the same protein-coding
gene sequences, and about HALF of their DNA overall.
But new study in a series of papers in Nature, Science, and Genome Research found some key
variances in the way mouse and human genes are regulated.
More specifically, they found that a mouse’s immune, metabolic and stress response systems
behaved differently than a human’s at the genetic level.
Scientists had been operating under the assumption that mouse genes and human genes would express
the same way, but even though the genes appear to accomplish the same tasks, they did those
tasks in a slightly different way.
Like taking a different road to the same destination… and in science, that little detail matters…
a lot.
Now, let's not all start laughing at science, or assume that all the studies ever done are
now invalid lies.
That's simply not the case.
Mice and humans are still similar enough to go along with, but as medicine probes deeper
and gets more person-to-person specific, the gene expression of each person is going to
affect how they're treated.
And knowing the key differences in how mice and human genes work is going to affect HOW
they'll create that treatment.
As the researchers say, "the mouse continues to be a very good model [for humans]."
Now they just need to fine tune their experimentation.
Because 95 percent of ALL medical experiments use these genetically modified lab mice, more
research is needed to see which studies will have to be re-done (if any) using this new
information.
And, luckily for us, the researchers promise there will be more than a dozen studies on
the mus musculus in the coming years.
This is going to be super interesting.
How do you feel about science using mice?