Biology of the Laboratory Mouse

Abstract

THE Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1939. During this short space of time, the staff of the laboratory, under the leadership of Dr. C. C. Little, in addition to numerous important investigations, has carried out a task which puts large sections of medical research deeply in their debt. The primary object of the laboratory is cancer research ; Dr. Little and his team realized very early that many phases of this problem cannot be tackled successfully without bringing the genetic variables under control. A homogeneous strain of animals can be produced by continued close inbreeding. But a single pure line would be of very limited value ; so the laboratory set out to establish a large number of inbred strains of mice differing widely both in the incidence of tumours and in the type of malignancy to which they are prone. But this ‘Variety of uniformity’, unique in mammals, is also an almost untapped source of material for the study of innate and environmental factors in nearly any conceivable phase of mammalian biology and pathology. It would be difficult to muster a more competent team to write a biology of the mouse than the staff of the Jackson Laboratory.

Biology of the Laboratory Mouse

By the Staff of the Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory. Edited by George D. Snell. With a chapter on Infectious Diseases of Mice, by J. H. Dingle. Pp. ix + 497. (Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company, 1941.) 7 dollars.