A mouse for all seasons
This is what National Geographic says in a photo caption beneath a picture of The Jackson Laboratory's most popular strain of mouse, Black 6:
"Call the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and you may hear: 'All of our representatives are assisting other customers.' Not unusual -- till you consider that the flood of calls to the nonprofit is from people ordering mice. And not just any mice. These are bred with specific genetic makeups, each a model for a human disease or disorder -- everything from bone loss to blindness, Alzheimer's to arthritis. Over 75 years the lab's catalog has grown to include more than 3,300 strains. Mouse farming gained new impetus from the recent sequencing of the human and mouse genomes, which confirmed how genetically similar the two species are (the differences have to do with when and where genes are activated). Last year Jackson shipped 2.4 million mice to 16,000 researchers worldwide. The most popular strain -- the Black 6, developed in 1921 -- has been used to study everything from diabetes to obesity, and has even traveled aboard the space shuttle. That's a mouse worth holding the line for." -- Peter Gwin
*A link to the photo is not available online. See the magazine at your newsstand.
