It’s All About the Mice: How the Mouse is Used in Research
What are inbred mice, why use them, and how are they generated? Inbred mice? Knockout mice? Transgenic mice? Congenic mice? Why so many?! Inbred mice are mice that are genetically identical within a generation and across generations. The use of these animals permits reproducibility and consistency across experiments in order to make definitive observations and interpretations that cannot be attributed to genetic variation. For example, humans are an outbred species and each individual responds differently to the same influenza virus. This is due to the genetic variation in humans in which some of us carry certain alleles for genes that [...]
