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Volume 50 Issue 10, October 2021

50 years of Lab Animal

We’ve gone retro this month to celebrate Lab Animal’s 50th Anniversary! 1971 saw the very first issue of the long-running journal, which has grown to encompass animal research from vivarium to lab bench and everywhere in between and features an ever-growing menagerie of model species. Here’s to 50 more years!

See Editorial

IMAGE: Marina Spence. COVER DESIGN: Marina Spence.

Volume 50 Issue 10

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In This Issue

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Editorial

  • Lab Animal celebrates its 50th birthday this month. This milestone anniversary presents an opportunity to reflect on how animal research has changed over the past fifty years and consider what the future might hold.

    Editorial
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Protocol Review

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Comment

  • For over a century, researchers have used mice as models and adapted many new methods to create novel mutations in them. In the past 100+ years, we have gone from breeding strains for selected traits to inducing random mutations throughout the genome to creating designer alleles with multiple functions. Each method offers opportunities and challenges for researchers as they try to address specific research questions with mouse models.

    • Susan M. Bello
    • Michelle N. Perry
    • Cynthia L. Smith
    Comment

  • To improve rigor and reproducibility of animal research, the recently released NIH Advisory Committee report recommends major improvements in investigator statistical training and practice. The IACUC can serve as important gatekeepers of research quality by ensuring that simple statistically based reproducibility criteria are addressed in animal use protocols.

    • Penny Reynolds
    Comment

  • There is a growing interest in being able to better describe a Culture of Care, particularly as institutions are being asked to nurture such a culture and engage proactively on the care and welfare of the animals used for research purposes. Based on responses collected using an anonymized virtual interactive online poll, we provide some suggestions to help promote further awareness of how animal welfare ethical review bodies can champion a Culture of Care.

    • Sally Robinson
    • Angela Kerton
    Comment
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Q&A

  • Lab Animal asked a group of experts in industry and academia about how the field has changed over their careers and how they think animal research can be improved in the future.

    • Ellen P. Neff
    Q&A
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Technology Feature

  • ‘Good welfare is good science,’ the saying goes. But how do researchers, veterinarians, and animal care staff refine the lives of their laboratory animals?

    • Ellen P. Neff

    Collection:

    Technology Feature
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Research Highlights

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Articles

  • Enchytraeus crypticus is a soil-dwelling annelid worm that has been used over the past two decades as an ecotoxicology model. Here, Mónica Amorim and colleagues present the first genome for E. crypticus. The authors identify a number of expanded gene families, including several involved with innate immunity.

    • Mónica J. B. Amorim
    • Yannick Gansemans
    • Janeck J. Scott-Fordsmand
    Article Open Access
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