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The knockout rat pack

Nature Medicine volume 16, pages 254–257 (2010)Cite this article

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The rat is the preferred model organism in many fields of biomedicine, such as toxicology testing. But when it comes to disease models, rats have been upstaged by mice, which traditionally were far easier to genetically engineer. Elie Dolgin follows the tale of the researchers who are bringing the rat back into the race.

On a chilly late autumnal day in November 2008, Aron Geurts marched into a windowless basement animal facility to check up on his rats. There, he found five newborns in the litter, clustered together and barely a week old. Three of the newborn rats were glowing bright green, but it was the two normal-looking newborns that intrigued Geurts. One of his first thoughts, he recalls, was “where's the champagne?!”

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  1. Elie Dolgin is assistant news editor for Nature Medicine in New York.,

    Elie Dolgin

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  1. Elie Dolgin
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Dolgin, E. The knockout rat pack. Nat Med 16, 254–257 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0310-254

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0310-254

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