Literature Network » Ralph Waldo Emerson

Custom-Made Mice Have Served Men for Decades

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 20070827
Author:David Brown - Washington Post Staff Writer

Ralph Waldo Emerson is reputed to have said that if a man makes a better mousetrap "though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

Gary A. Churchill hopes this is also true if a man builds a better mouse.

Actually, it's already true.

Biologists have been beating a path to this town on Mount Desert Island since 1933, when the Jackson Laboratory began selling inbred mice for genetic research.

Today, the laboratory offers about 3,000 strains. Individual animals in each strain are essentially all the same at the genetic level -- an endless stream of ...

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