Recently, two groups led by laboratories involved in the EMMA consortium, the MRC in the UK and the GSF in Germany, reported last year in Nature Genetics to have created 500 and 429 new mutants respectively in the framework of National Genome projects. The interest of keeping this increasing number of genetically modified mice is enormous, as creating, screening and characterising those mutants require a heavy investment. Moreover, the development of new techniques to generate mutants opens the way to a systematic creation of new strains that can then be stored for subsequent use in biomedical research. The expected result is to have an efficient archive of mutant mice offering the scientific community efficient search mechanisms a well as access and delivery methods of the desired strains. This is what the EMMA consortium is committed to achieve using the Community funds that will be made available upon successful conclusion of ongoing negotiations.
Mice are small, they grow fast and reproduce quickly.
And because they are mammals they share with humans most of its genome, which turns out to be of similar size and to have a comparable number of genes. This makes of them a suitable model for human genomics and human health research. For the last 20 years mouse has been used to reproduce in a smaller scale the conditions leading to disorders of major concern for humans, namely cancer. They provide also a controlled environment to test the effectiveness of new drugs that later on will be developed into medicines for humans. With the advent of genomics knowledge, mouse become increasingly interesting for geneticists and doctors as they develop the ability to tailor the genetic constitution of the offspring, therefore allowing them to create strains with the desired genotype and phenotype characteristics.