innovation & technology
To Maintain a Mouse: What Goes On at UNC’s Mutant Mouse Resource and Research Center By Mytri Vunnam
Image Courtesy of NanoString
M
ice are the most common model organisms used in the study of human genetics and disease, and for good reason. Mice are genetically similar to humans, sharing approximately 97.5% of their DNA. Furthermore, they are easy to genetically manipulate. With modern sequencing and genomic tools, mutant mice strains can be developed and bred to mimic nearly any human disease or physiological condition. Hundreds of these genetically modified mice are created every year by labs to study the manifestations of various conditions and diseases or to test the effects of specific genetic mutations.3 But what happens once the study is complete? Researchers can either choose to maintain the mutant mice strain in their lab, or they can get rid of the mice. However, getting rid of these designed animals represents a massive loss of time and money for the scientific community that was spent cultivating these mice strains.1 Here is where the Mutant Mouse Resource and Research Center (MMRRC) enters the picture. The MMRRC is a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded resource core built to maintain and distribute the mutant mice. There are four locations throughout the country: The Jackson Laboratory in Maine, the
University of California, Davis (UC Davis), the University of Missouri, and here at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Labs can submit their mutant mice to these centers, and the MMRRC will work to bio-archive the strains. They collect and cryopreserve the sperm, embryos, and even embryonic stem cells from these animals. If another study wants to use an existing strain for their research, the mouse can be rederived using the preserved sperm or embryos, skipping the lengthy design process. This essentially creates an archive of genetically modified mice that can repeatedly be pulled for use in scientific study.1 One of the hottest topics in genetics research is the examination of how environmental factors, such as diet, smoking, or stress, affect development. A leading goal of both the NIH and UNC’s MMRRC is to understand how these environmental exposures affect the sperm and embryos being collected from donor mice. Dr. Folami Ideraabdullah, an Associate Professor of UNC’s Departments of Genetics and Nutrition, has been working on the epigenome and developmental genetics for over a decade. She notably received her Ph.D. in Genetics and Molecular Biology from UNC. Her lab
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focuses on how environmental factors, such as diet, affect the epigenome and can contribute to the development of metabolic and reproductive diseases. With the support of Terry Magnuson, the Principal Investigator of UNC’s MMRRC, the Ideraabdullah lab conducted a study to investigate how different standard laboratory chow diets and the timing of exposure to these diets affect the phenotype, microbiome, and epigenome of the mice consuming them. The mice donated to UNC’s MMRRC are reared on varying standard chow diets. While all these diets technically have “sufficient” nutrition, the specific amounts of macro- and micronutrients
Dr. Folami Ideraabdullah