Abbie E. C. Lathrop (1868 – 1918) was a rodent fancier and commercial breeder who bred fancy mice and inbred strains for animal models, particularly for research on development and hereditary properties of cancer.
Lathrop was born in 1868 in Illinois to schoolteachers. She was homeschooled until she was 16 and earned an Illinois teaching certificate after about two years at an academy. She taught elementary school before moving to a Granby, Massachusetts farm in 1900. After her poultry business failed, she started breeding rats and mice for hobbyists and pet owners. She also raised ferrets, rabbits, and guinea pigs. She was assisted by her friends Edith Chapin and Ada Gray. Lathrop started out with a pair of waltzing mice she obtained in Granby and her farm grew to hold over 11,000 mice at one point. Her breeding records later proved useful for researchers. Lathrop began selling rodents to scientific researchers, including Harvard University's Bussey Institute. [2] The United States government purchased her guinea pigs to test for toxic gas in the trenches of World War I. [3]
For the Granby Mouse Farm Lathrop sourced wild mice from Michigan and Vermont. She bred Japanese waltzing mice as well as fancy mice. [4] The mice had straw bedding and lived in wooden boxes. They were fed a diet of oats and crackers. Lathrop reported going through one and a half tons of oats and over 12 barrels of crackers each month. She occasionally paid local children 7 cents an hour to clean the cages. [5]
As early as 1908 [6] Lathrop found that unusual skin lesions were developing in some of her mice. She sent samples to scientists and corresponded with experimental pathologist Leo Loeb, who identified the lesions as malignant. Lathrop began developing inbred strains around 1910. Loeb and Lathrop performed experiments at her farm and the pair authored 10 journal articles from 1913 to 1919, [6] including those published in the Journal of Cancer Research and the Journal of Experimental Medicine . They established that ovariectomies reduced the incidence of mammary tumors and that tumor susceptibility varied in different strains of mice. [3]
Mammalian geneticist William E. Castle purchased some of Lathrop's mice in 1902. He trained C. C. Little who bred C57BL/6J ("Black 6") from Lathrop's mouse number 57. [3] Black 6 became the most frequently used strain of laboratory mouse. [3] While Little patronizingly called Lathrop a "talented pet-shop owner," his own DBA strain was probably derived from her partially inbred silver fawn mice. [7] Karin Knorr Cetina wrote in 2009 that at least five of the primary strains of laboratory mice in use may derive from a single female from Lathrop. [4]
Lathrop died of pernicious anemia in 1918. She was interred at West Cemetery in Granby, near her friends Chapin and Gray. [3] Her notebooks, observations, and breeding records are kept in the library of The Jackson Laboratory. [8]
A model organism is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. Model organisms are widely used to research human disease when human experimentation would be unfeasible or unethical. This strategy is made possible by the common descent of all living organisms, and the conservation of metabolic and developmental pathways and genetic material over the course of evolution.
The fancy rat is the domesticated form of Rattus norvegicus, the brown rat, and the most common species of rat kept as a pet. The name fancy rat derives from the use of the adjective fancy for a hobby, also seen in "animal fancy", a hobby involving the appreciation, promotion, or breeding of pet or domestic animals. The offspring of wild-caught specimens, having become docile after having been bred for many generations, fall under the fancy type.
Inbred strains are individuals of a particular species which are nearly identical to each other in genotype due to long inbreeding. A strain is inbred when it has undergone at least 20 generations of brother x sister or offspring x parent mating, at which point at least 98.6% of the loci in an individual of the strain will be homozygous, and each individual can be treated effectively as clones. Some inbred strains have been bred for over 150 generations, leaving individuals in the population to be isogenic in nature. Inbred strains of animals are frequently used in laboratories for experiments where for the reproducibility of conclusions all the test animals should be as similar as possible. However, for some experiments, genetic diversity in the test population may be desired. Thus outbred strains of most laboratory animals are also available, where an outbred strain is a strain of an organism that is effectively wildtype in nature, where there is as little inbreeding as possible.
The laboratory mouse or lab mouse is a small mammal of the order Rodentia which is bred and used for scientific research or feeders for certain pets. Laboratory mice are usually of the species Mus musculus. They are the most commonly used mammalian research model and are used for research in genetics, physiology, psychology, medicine and other scientific disciplines. Mice belong to the Euarchontoglires clade, which includes humans. This close relationship, the associated high homology with humans, their ease of maintenance and handling, and their high reproduction rate, make mice particularly suitable models for human-oriented research. The laboratory mouse genome has been sequenced and many mouse genes have human homologues. Lab mice are sold at pet stores for snake food and can also be kept as pets.
In biology, a strain is a genetic variant, a subtype or a culture within a biological species. Strains are often seen as inherently artificial concepts, characterized by a specific intent for genetic isolation. This is most easily observed in microbiology where strains are derived from a single cell colony and are typically quarantined by the physical constraints of a Petri dish. Strains are also commonly referred to within virology, botany, and with rodents used in experimental studies.
Clarence Cook Little was an American genetics, cancer, and tobacco researcher and academic administrator, as well as a proponent of eugenics.
Laboratory rats or lab rats are strains of the rat subspecies Rattus norvegicus domestica which are bred and kept for scientific research. While less commonly used for research than laboratory mice, rats have served as an important animal model for research in psychology and biomedical science.
C57BL/6, often referred to as "C57 black 6", "B6", "C57" or "black 6", is a common inbred strain of laboratory mouse.
In genetics, two organisms that differ in only one locus and a linked segment of chromosome are defined as congenic. Similarly, organisms that are coisogenic differ in one locus only and not in the surrounding chromosome. Unlike congenic organisms, coisogenic organisms cannot be bred and only occur through spontaneous or targeted mutation at the locus.
BALB/c is an albino, laboratory-bred strain of the house mouse from which a number of common substrains are derived. Now over 200 generations from New York in 1920, BALB/c mice are distributed globally, and are among the most widely used inbred strains used in animal experimentation.
The history of model organisms began with the idea that certain organisms can be studied and used to gain knowledge of other organisms or as a control (ideal) for other organisms of the same species. Model organisms offer standards that serve as the authorized basis for comparison of other organisms. Model organisms are made standard by limiting genetic variance, creating, hopefully, this broad applicability to other organisms.
Leo Loeb, was a German-American physician, educator, and experimental pathologist.
A recombinant inbred strain or recombinant inbred line (RIL) is an organism with chromosomes that incorporate an essentially permanent set of recombination events between chromosomes inherited from two or more inbred strains. F1 and F2 generations are produced by intercrossing the inbred strains; pairs of the F2 progeny are then mated to establish inbred strains through long-term inbreeding.
Jacqueline N. Crawley is an American behavioral neuroscientist and an expert on rodent behavioral analysis. Since July 2012, she is the Robert E. Chason Chair in Translational Research in the MIND Institute and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento. Previously, from 1983–2012, she was chief of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience in the intramural program of the National Institute of Mental Health. Her translational research program focuses on testing hypotheses about the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and discovering treatments for the diagnostic symptoms of autism, using mouse models. She has published more than 275 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and 110 review articles and book chapters. According to Scopus, her works have been cited over 36,000 times, giving her an h-index of 99. She has co-edited 4 books and is the author of What's Wrong With my Mouse? Behavioral Phenotyping of Transgenic and Knockout Mice, which was very well received.
Coisogenic strains are one type of inbred strain that differs by a mutation at a single locus and all of the other loci are identical. There are numerous ways to create an inbred strain and each of these strains are unique. Genetically engineered mice can be considered a coisogenic strain if the only difference between the engineered mouse and a wild-type mouse is a specific locus. Coisogenic strains can be used to investigate the function of a certain genetic locus.
Taconic Biosciences is a private biotechnology company specializing in genetically engineered mouse and rat models, microbiome, immuno-oncology mouse models, and integrated model design and breeding services. The company was founded in 1952 as Taconic Farms. The company has three service laboratories and six breeding facilities in the U.S. and Europe, and is headquartered in Rensselaer, New York.
FVB is an albino, inbred laboratory mouse strain that is named after its susceptibility to Friend leukemia virus B.
Clara J. Lynch was an American biologist and cancer researcher, who notably pioneered the use of the Swiss laboratory mouse in cancer research.
The laboratory mouse has been instrumental in investigating the genetics of human disease, including cancer, for over 110 years. The laboratory mouse has physiology and genetic characteristics very similar to humans providing powerful models for investigation of the genetic characteristics of disease.
The Japanese house mouse or Japanese wild mouse is a type of house mouse that originated in Japan. Genetically, it is a hybrid between the southeastern Asian house mouse and the eastern European house mouse. It is thus not a unique subspecies, but is treated as such for its characteristic features. It is among the smallest house mice. Different strains such as MSM/Ms, JF1, Japanese waltzing mouse, C57BL/6J and MSKR exist following cross breeding with other house mice, and are used in different genetic and medical investigations.