Help is Needed!
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abbeysays peace
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:52 pm
Help is Needed!
I am doing a science project on How Food Supplements Affect the Weight Gain of Juvenile Mice. Currently, I am doing background research on Mice, and i would like to know some information on them. Any help, please?
-abbey!
Re: Help is Needed!
Have you gotten the appropriate authorization to deal with animals? Do you have the appropriate facilities to raise mice? What are you planning to do with the mice when you are done?abbeysays peace wrote:I am doing a science project on How Food Supplements Affect the Weight Gain of Juvenile Mice. Currently, I am doing background research on Mice, and i would like to know some information on them. Any help, please?
What exactly is your hypothesis? Obviously, there is a lot if information about mice, so you need to help us narrow it down.
Louise
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carolinethorn
- Former Expert
- Posts: 393
- Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:40 pm
Hi Abbey
I am asuming that you are doing your project in a lab and have all the proper clearance and ethics plan as Louise said.
There are many different kinds of laboratory mice that have been bred over the years to study different things. Laboratory mice are very different from wild mice as they have much less genetic variation and get diseases that mice don't normally get in the wild. The different types of lab mouse are called "strains". Some strains have black coats others have yellow coats and different strains are known to be prone to certain diseases or conditions whereas others might be more resistant. In fact some strains were bred specifically to be a type of model for a disease so that experiments could be done on them to look for cures.
Some strains are known to gain weight on a high fat diet whereas others will not gain very much. And there are some mice that have specific genetic changes - knock out mice (that are missing a particular gene) or transgenic mice (that have an extra gene added) - that gain extreme amounts of weight. The Jackson labs research facility in Maine was set up in 1920's to look at mouse biology and genetics. Their website has very detailed information on different mouse strains and genetically modified mice and their genetics and biology. Their website is at http://www.jax.org but its not very easy to find general background information. These pages have a good history on the use of mice in the lab
http://www.informatics.jax.org/silver/f ... e1-1.shtml
The jackson labs website is also good if you have a specific strain in mind you are working with and want to find out more about it. Let me know if that is the case and we can help you on that.
Best of luck,
Caroline
I am asuming that you are doing your project in a lab and have all the proper clearance and ethics plan as Louise said.
There are many different kinds of laboratory mice that have been bred over the years to study different things. Laboratory mice are very different from wild mice as they have much less genetic variation and get diseases that mice don't normally get in the wild. The different types of lab mouse are called "strains". Some strains have black coats others have yellow coats and different strains are known to be prone to certain diseases or conditions whereas others might be more resistant. In fact some strains were bred specifically to be a type of model for a disease so that experiments could be done on them to look for cures.
Some strains are known to gain weight on a high fat diet whereas others will not gain very much. And there are some mice that have specific genetic changes - knock out mice (that are missing a particular gene) or transgenic mice (that have an extra gene added) - that gain extreme amounts of weight. The Jackson labs research facility in Maine was set up in 1920's to look at mouse biology and genetics. Their website has very detailed information on different mouse strains and genetically modified mice and their genetics and biology. Their website is at http://www.jax.org but its not very easy to find general background information. These pages have a good history on the use of mice in the lab
http://www.informatics.jax.org/silver/f ... e1-1.shtml
The jackson labs website is also good if you have a specific strain in mind you are working with and want to find out more about it. Let me know if that is the case and we can help you on that.
Best of luck,
Caroline