How a 20-gram rodent conquered the world of science

I haven't been screwing off. Here is my report from the third conference for Strategically Engineered Negligable Senescence, the brainchild of cell biologist Aubrey DeGrey, as it appeared in the Times of London:

This summer two Cambridge undergraduates approached Aubrey de Grey, an outspoken expert on ageing, in his favourite pub, hoping for an informal chat. “Er, sorry, Dr de Grey?” one of them said. “I just wanted to say that I heard your lecture about antiageing medicine and that I thought it was brill . . .”

“Then what are you doing about it?” de Grey replied.

“What?” his student admirer said, clearly puzzled.

“What are you doing about it?” de Grey repeated, tapping his knuckles on the table before him. “Look, go to my website at Mprize.com and look under “what you can do”. There’s a list of six things you can do to help. Then if you have any more questions we can talk. All right?”

Dr de Grey is trying to end human ageing. End it, or, as he describes his mission, “to engineer huge gains in human life span”. Huge gains as in a 1,000-year life span, and a healthy 1,000 years at that. Huge gains as in the reversal of ageing in those already considered old. Huge gains as in the end of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

The steady dirge of diabetes swells all about us, dark and onerous: the condition is now estimated to affect 7 percent of the population, with some putting the figure closer to 10 percent; with new molecular diagnostics, the numbers get even grimmer, with pre-diabetes—a state of risky blood sugar levels and inflammatory agents—edging in on 20 percent of the population. It is no surprise that a UCLA professor this past week called the numbers “the tip of the iceberg.”

Or is it the beak of the finch? When a condition that can lead to disability and premature death affects so large a part of a population, what’s really going on?

If there is a group of humans who whose fate tracks with that of lab mice, it is that of the Caloric Restriction Society, whose members make a lifestyle out of the long-noted fact that lab mice live nearly twice as long as regular mice--if they are dramatically underfed. I wondered what this group of steel-willed individuals, whose members eat anywhere from 25-40 percent less than us on a daily basis, was up to lately. So this past weekend I travelled to Tarrytown, NY to see them in action. Here is my report:

 What is it about keeping lab mice that continually seems to conjure images of World War II? Is it the obvious:that, in the case of lab mice, we are all Col. Klink, the hapless commandante of Stalag 17, doomed to dominance ohne respect? Or is it domething else in the increasingly murky relationship between the muridae and you and I?

I was thinking about this the other evening on the way home from a family get together. As such events incline, it was pretty good, save for the continuing presence of my niece's fiance, a 250-poudner named Arthur. It's not the guy's weight that bothers me, nor even his gang attire, gun-tattoos and generally unkempt appearance, and, above all, his refusal to talk. To anyone. I've decided to cut him a break on all that a while ago after my mother said, with an eyebrow rising, "Greg, he's only 22. After all, we all do  change, right?" No, there was always something else that bothered me about the guy, and now I know what it is: he's a reptile guy. That's right, the dimwad loves snakes.

 I found this out when I began talking about my mice, and my niece, now tattooted too, said, "Oh, Arthur would be very interested in your meese, wouldn't you Arthur?"

Eur-eek!-a, they have found it!

Los Angeles: Just a short dispatch from the press room of the annual convention of the American Association for Cancer Research, which is celebrating its centennial this year. Considering the scale of the gathering--it fills the LA Convention Center--one would expect a basketball game to take place. But no. This is a convening of some of the most serious-minded people in the world, working on a disease that claims the lives of millions every year. It is, of course, an industry in itself--and that makes the trade show floor just as interesting ( and a bit less tedious) as the scientific workshops going on at the same time. And it is an industry largely built on the very tiny shoulders of our friend, mus musculus.

Escape!

Last night, while Tony and Bobby were beating the bejesus out of each other over a game of Monopoly gone very bad, we faced a situation also fraught with violence, or at least potential violence: the escape of a mouse from Mousefarm.

THE PUZZLE OF ENRICHMENT 

The mice were up late last night, as they should be. I could hear the squeaky, cheaply made Chinese running wheel going on and on and on and on.

 Soprano syndrome in the mousehouse?

My mouse farm!

Today,after endless finessing, I finally got word that I will be getting my own mice. My own lab mice. To observe. At home.

That's a big deal in itself. It is easy to get pet mice--but I didn't want that. I wanted the kind of mice Clarence Little observed and bred in the 1920s--the c57black strain that now dominates lab science world wide. And that wasn't easy. My studio is not, among other things, "a certified and accredited lab and murine facility," as one source explained to me, and so I could not have one. I tried to explain that, according to my wife, it  is a certified mental ward, but that didn's seem to help my cause.

For 100 million rodents a year: what are we getting?

According to two recent studies (Carbone 2004, Balcombe, 2005), the United States now leads the world in the consumption of yet one more thing: Rodents. Specifically, for our purposes, mice--the usage of which now tallies near 80 million per annum in the US. In fact, our usage has been soaring while consumption by the other big mouse user, the EU, has actually been shrinking, partly because of new EU regulations, and partly because of growing doubts about at least some of the mus's worthiness as a test animal for toxicity and carcinogenicity.

Mouse lab culture

This is a very exciting new forum for me. I am working on a book about the rise of the mouse as the preeminent biological model for human disease, and one of the most challlenging aspects of the research is accessing what might be called blue collar lab culture--the guys who clean the auto-claving machines, run the routine PCR routines, pack and ship, etc. I wonder why that is? As most labs are run by people who pride themselves on being enlightened, it seems odd that there are so few labs whose labor force is organized. Perhaps this is because of the ad hoc nature of how a lab often evolves--it is not something people are thinking about much. But I think it doubly interesting that in one workplace you can have such huge class divides of people all working around one 20 gram mammal.