Lab mice have cool names like C57Bl/6 and CD1, and they work out on tiny treadmills. They get all the chow they want to eat, and shavings to snuggle in. Although they don’t get out to the tattoo parlor, some of them do wear identifying gold tags in their ears. Stanford recently talked with The Boy, aka The Little Guy, who’s a key player in studies at the Falk Cardiovascular Research Center. The chat was facilitated by the aptly named Professor Thomas Quertermous, director of the division of cardiovascular medicine.
There’s a bully in every lab.
“The C57s are meanies,” The Boy says about one strain of inbred, genetically modified black mice. “They’re a pain in the butt, they’ll try to bite you and they’re not good mothers.”
CD1s make good neighbors.
Like mixed-breed dogs, the little white, pink-eyed mice are smart survivors—and sweet-tempered. “She’s so comfortable with him,” The Boy says as a poufy, expectant mom climbs up Quertermous’s shirtsleeve. “She couldn’t be any cuter.”
The Boy is one rare mouse.
In an effort to learn more about cardiovascular functioning in mice, scientists manipulate mouse genomes to find out which genes are implicated in certain functions and diseases of the heart. Some mice are ordered from labs, and some—like The Boy—are created on the Farm. Modified genes are injected into fertilized eggs, which are implanted in a mouse that subsequently gives birth to a creature with an all-new genetic code. “I’m unique in the world,” The Boy notes.
And his background is colorful.
Some of The Little Guy’s cells were taken from a black mouse and some came from an agouti (read: beige) mouse, so he is considered a chimera. When he was born, postdocs and research assistants gathered round for weeks to check his vitals. “Every day, they’d be, like, ‘Is he gaining weight?’”
Somebody has to do it.
When Quertermous’s lab mice come of age, some are stressed by being served a high-fat diet. Others are given a peptide that stimulates the cardiovascular system, then put on a treadmill and measured for oxygen intake. Still others are euthanized to see how changing the genetics has changed the pathology of their tissues. The Boy’s lot in lab life is comparatively cushy: female mice are brought to his cage for several days at a time, and he is expected to produce offspring. “I just hang out and visit with the ladies,” he says.
Ah, youth.
As a teensy two-week-old pup, The Little Guy could not sit still. “We jump around so much at that age—pop, pop, pop—that they call us ‘popcorn,’” he recalls. “Some days my handler would take the lid off my cage to clean it, and I’d be out of there in a flash.”
The Golden Years aren’t bad either.
If The Boy has a child that’s all brown, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that offspring will carry the mutation Quertermous wants to examine for his studies of how the cardiovascular system adapts to stress. “I won’t get experimented on, or sacrificed,” The Little Guy says as he looks to the future. “I’ll just keep making babies into old age.”
