I sometime do various experiments on animals, usually mice or rat. I don’t “mutate” them in the sense of making something else out of them or turning them into beasts etc… But I genetically engineer them sometimes to turn on and off their genes to understand the function of a particular gene. For instance I express fluorescent protein genes on animals to specifically identify the location of neuron cells that I’m after. (this is what happens if you express fluorescent protein on all over animal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVGzy0qB5k
I don’t go that far though, my experiments just make a part of their brain glow…
I do “mutate” bacteria though.
Like Yagiz, my lab has genetically altered mice to remove a gene to see how they respond to infections. do they get more or less sick? do they get sick like the “normal” or wildtype mice and then get better when the wildtype dont? This is a very useful technique for scientific research, but it is all very closely controlled by an ethics committee. you must write up a proposal on what you want to do to your animals and why. What do you hope to gain by using animals? have you done some early studies in cells to show your idea could work? have you done statistical calculations to make sure you don’t use too many mice and waste life, or too little and not have enough for your result to be taken seriously?
These proposals are then read by a panel of people. some are scientists, but some are not. This is to make sure that all animal experiments that are performed are considered to be worth the cost of the animals lives
I don’t currently work with mice, but I was involved in a project that used mice over the summer. I didn’t mutate these mice, but they were ‘genetically engineered’ so that one of their genes didn’t work. I then studied the effect of what happened when the gene was missing. The gene was a receptor for one of our hormones which we know is really important for development. The number of mice we used and what we did with the mice was tightly controlled by our ethics approval.
I sometime do various experiments on animals, usually mice or rat. I don’t “mutate” them in the sense of making something else out of them or turning them into beasts etc… But I genetically engineer them sometimes to turn on and off their genes to understand the function of a particular gene. For instance I express fluorescent protein genes on animals to specifically identify the location of neuron cells that I’m after. (this is what happens if you express fluorescent protein on all over animal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaVGzy0qB5k
I don’t go that far though, my experiments just make a part of their brain glow…
I do “mutate” bacteria though.
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Like Yagiz, my lab has genetically altered mice to remove a gene to see how they respond to infections. do they get more or less sick? do they get sick like the “normal” or wildtype mice and then get better when the wildtype dont? This is a very useful technique for scientific research, but it is all very closely controlled by an ethics committee. you must write up a proposal on what you want to do to your animals and why. What do you hope to gain by using animals? have you done some early studies in cells to show your idea could work? have you done statistical calculations to make sure you don’t use too many mice and waste life, or too little and not have enough for your result to be taken seriously?
These proposals are then read by a panel of people. some are scientists, but some are not. This is to make sure that all animal experiments that are performed are considered to be worth the cost of the animals lives
0
I don’t currently work with mice, but I was involved in a project that used mice over the summer. I didn’t mutate these mice, but they were ‘genetically engineered’ so that one of their genes didn’t work. I then studied the effect of what happened when the gene was missing. The gene was a receptor for one of our hormones which we know is really important for development. The number of mice we used and what we did with the mice was tightly controlled by our ethics approval.
0