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Sharing research tools and data with other scientists brings many benefits, such as using fewer animals, improving reproducibility and increasing study sample size, but the practice still needs to be more widely adopted.
‘Good welfare is good science,’ the saying goes. But how do researchers, veterinarians, and animal care staff refine the lives of their laboratory animals?
Animal welfare concerns, reduced flight options and increased costs are pushing researchers to consider shipping frozen sperm and embryos rather than live mice.
After a genetic revolution in the 80s, mice overtook rats as the laboratory animal of choice for many researchers. But in recent years, the gene editing capabilities that had lagged a little for the larger rodent have been coming up to par with their murine cousins. Is a return to rats on the way?
Tissue clearing methods let researchers see inside their animal models. However, there are a lot of options out there. Which to choose can depend on your question.
Animals are regular inhabitants of the International Space Station, but the knowledge they reveal doesn’t just end with their missions. Open science efforts are democratizing space science and helping researchers around the world understand what animal models of spaceflight can reveal about spending time among the stars.
A look at viral surveillance and how researchers and veterinarians identify what animals may be susceptible to different viruses, including SARS-CoV-2.
Studying potentially dangerous microbes in animal models of the disease they cause takes some extra considerations, as researchers and staff must perform their work under the careful restrictions of different biosafety level laboratories.
Researchers are building better barcodes and combining spatial and temporal tools to trace cell lineages from the earliest stages of animal development—and beyond.
As metagenomics advances, virus hunters are finding novel infections in colonies of laboratory mice across the world. What that means for scientific research and the animals themselves can depend on the mouse.
As COVID-19 continues to spread, the urgency of the hunt for effective therapeutics and vaccines has likewise grown. As with past outbreaks, animal models will be an important component of efforts to understand how the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes disease, and how best to defeat it.
To bridge brains and make the most of their nonhuman primate models, neuroscientists are setting standards, building tools, and starting to share their neuroimaging data.
