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(Slate) Amusing World's most popular strain of lab mouse a stereotypical farker: "He's a teenaged, alcoholic couch potato with a weakened immune system"   (slate.com) divider line 11
More: Amusing, immunodeficiencies, house mice, peas, heats, barbed wires, skin lesions, Bar Harbor, living fossils  
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859 clicks; posted to Geek » on 18 Nov 2011 at 11:28 AM   |  Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»   |    Get this fabulous T-Shirt and impress the methane out of your friends! shirt it!



11 Comments   (+0 »)
   
 
hstein3
2011-11-18 11:39:44 AM
Interesting history lesson, I suppose. It's all information any first-year grad student in the biosciences has to pick up at some point.

This guy has a point on the weakness of various models, but it's baked into the cake, so to speak. We know these things sometimes can be pretty poor analogs for human processes or disease. Unless you're volunteering to get poked and prodded in unspeakable ways, however, we have to work with what we've got and take the results with the appropriate grains of salt.

These days, the issue people don't like talking about is colony variability; that is, that Bl6 mouse you bought 5 years ago might not be genetically similar to the one you buy today. It's a big problem if you're making comparisons on the basis of an identical genetic background.
 
Gunny Highway
2011-11-18 11:44:10 AM
NARF!
 
Doc Daneeka
2011-11-18 11:52:34 AM
As a mouse geneticist, I have to say that I never thought I'd see a discussion of inbred mouse strains on Fark.
 
Cndn Bacon
2011-11-18 12:11:53 PM
I wasn't aware that mouse cages had basements in them.
 
greentea1985 [TotalFark]
2011-11-18 12:29:34 PM
My lab has run into the differences between the inbred strains. We started using black-6 with a tumor suppressor knocked out to get prostate cancer. The black-6 just do not get prostate cancer. They'll get a type of pre-cancerous lesion called PIN and just looking at them funny will make them get leukemia, but they don't get prostate cancer. We made the same knockout in the FVB mice, and they all developed prostate cancer. The mouse strain involved does matter. Smart scientists recognize when black-6s are useful, and when you need to switch to a different strain.
 
brantgoose [TotalFark]
2011-11-18 12:35:44 PM
If you give me one of those mice, I'll love him, and hug him, and squeeze him, and call him Kevin after Canada's answer to Beavis & Butthead, Kevin Spencer:

"Kevin Spencer His head don't work it never did.
Something's wrong with that kid.
He's a chain smokin' alcoholic sociopath."

It has a memorable jingle as its theme music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx3r_-aVNJs

Although Kevin really is a teenage sociopath, he's less crazy than almost everybody else in the series, including his psychotic imaginary friend, a goose named Allen the Magic Goose.

Sadly, most of the clips on the web seemed to be in Portuguese or Russian the last time I looked--apparently the series has gotten some air time overseas.

The good news is that there seems to be a lot more English clips now.

If you like Trailer Park Boys or Beavis & Butthead, you will LOVE Kevin Spencer right to death. It's funny because it's true.

And it is set right here in Ottawa, which despite the Federal Government, a couple of universities, etc., has an underclass like any other city, an underclass that consists of losers like Kevin, his revolving door con Dad, Anastasia his fat-bi-atch of a mother, and their loony and criminal class friends and frenemies.

Not to mention Allen the Magic Goose, who despite being imaginary can do a heck of a lot of damage.
 
Morrius
2011-11-18 12:38:16 PM
The C57BL/6 is a pretty calm strain of mouse. They're easy enough to pick up and manipulate. The white lab mice you hear about or see in films are most likely the SJ12 strain, and they're considerably more jumpy and likely to bite you when you try to pick them up.
 
hstein3
2011-11-18 01:14:38 PM
Morrius: The C57BL/6 is a pretty calm strain of mouse. They're easy enough to pick up and manipulate. The white lab mice you hear about or see in films are most likely the SJ12 strain, and they're considerably more jumpy and likely to bite you when you try to pick them up.

Hm, I'd have figured most white mice would be BALB/c. Or maybe I'm biased as an immunologist.

greentea1985: My lab has run into the differences between the inbred strains. We started using black-6 with a tumor suppressor knocked out to get prostate cancer. The black-6 just do not get prostate cancer. They'll get a type of pre-cancerous lesion called PIN and just looking at them funny will make them get leukemia, but they don't get prostate cancer. We made the same knockout in the FVB mice, and they all developed prostate cancer. The mouse strain involved does matter. Smart scientists recognize when black-6s are useful, and when you need to switch to a different strain.

You know what's ridiculously frustrating? DuPont's patent on the "oncomouse," that is, any mouse that's been genetically altered to be more susceptible to cancer. I'm amazed such a patent is allowed to stand.
 
Chthonic Echoes
2011-11-18 01:32:55 PM
I work in a laboratory focused on circadian biology. Our mouse is the C57/Bl6 . . . which is deficient in melatonin :(
 
Morrius
2011-11-18 04:09:50 PM
Hm, I'd have figured most white mice would be BALB/c. Or maybe I'm biased as an immunologist.


Is that an immune-compromised strain? I said SJ12 because I work with neuro. I thought immunologists preferred bald mice.
 
hstein3
2011-11-18 05:37:39 PM
Morrius: Hm, I'd have figured most white mice would be BALB/c. Or maybe I'm biased as an immunologist.


Is that an immune-compromised strain? I said SJ12 because I work with neuro. I thought immunologists preferred bald mice.

Eh, it depends. C57/Bl6 and BALB/c tend to be the most common with immunologists, mostly because they tend to have the more pronounced Th1/Th2 responses, respectively. Also, we tend to work with what everyone has worked with before; comparing results is pretty important.

In the end, though, it's pretty utilitarian. If you have a disease you're studying, you'll use the strain that has the best results (closest to human, easiest to induce disease, most robust response, etc.) A safe bet for a paper is always one comparing that disease across strains. There's plenty of groups that will even breed their own strains if they're working with something new; I know a guy who started a line of mice for studying SARS.

My work is mostly about rheumatoid arthritis, and each disease model works best in a different strain.
 
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