Mice don't have many friends in the human world. Except of course the Dr Hadwen Trust, Eye's favourite charity, which works tirelessly to discover alternatives to using animals in research. The Trust is outraged that millions of genetically modified mice are sacrificed to genetic research. Ever since human DNA was decoded, the little furry ones have been more in demand than ever in laboratories. The genetic research on mice has been based on the assumption that a specific gene in a mouse is the same as the equivalent gene in a person. But Dr Hadwen reports that researchers in Michigan have shown that this assumption is way off. They identified essential genes in people and 'knocked' them out in mice. The mice should have died, but not all of them did. In fact, twenty-two per cent of these essential genes weren't so essential in mice. Eye feels that at least this research might prove beneficial to mice in future.

Labels: Dr Hadwen, mice