Leung Lab Blog

I just come across with this article in Slate Magazine “The Mouse Trap – The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.” that talks in great details about the limitation of using animal model to look for new drugs to treat human diseases.  For example, the control healthy mouse can actually be metabolically abnormal because of the way we keep and grow them. A recent paper published in the PNAS has unveiled some of these issues.

Martin B, Ji S, Maudsley S, Mattson MP. “Control” laboratory rodents are metabolically morbid: why it matters. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Apr 6;107(14):6127-33. Epub 2010 Mar 1. PubMed PMID: 20194732; PubMed Central PMCID:  PMC2852022.

And I just notice that this slate article belongs to a series of article, including one that talks about my favorite – naked mole rats.

The Mouse Trap – The Trouble With Black-6A tiny alcoholic takes over the lab.

The Mouse Trap – The Anti-Mouse – Could a hairless African rodent be our secret weapon in the war on cancer?

Douglas Prasher by Miller Mobley

The other day I shared the story of Douglas Prasher‘s with the medical students in my class.  Dr. Prasher’s contribution to the study of Green Fluorescent Protein had ultimately led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008; however he was not one of the laureates because of life circumstances. During my preparation, I read some of the stories again and came across this recent article “How Bad Luck & Bad Networking Cost Douglas Prasher a Nobel Prize” published in the Discover Magazine. The article provides an in-depth coverage of the struggles that Dr. Prasher has  gone through over the years. I have been deeply impressed with his determination and noble attitudes over the years despite the difficult situations. I also really like the amazing portraits that Miller Mobley took for this article in the Discover Magazine.  The lighting and composition of his work is outstanding that each picture is like an intense and charming moment that is frozen in time, including the ones for Dr. Prasher.

The other day we talked about the historical moment when Matt Meselson and Frank Stahl elucidated the semi-conservative mechanism of DNA replication.

We briefly discussed the challenges that they faced at that time as a graduate student and a postdoc, which I think would give us insights to face our own challenges. I am still reading the longer book about the history behind this experiment. I think it is a very entertaining read but it is also very thick. A shorter historical account published in the PNAS would be easier for many of us to get an overall impression of the story.

References:

Hanawalt PC. Density matters: the semiconservative replication of DNA. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Dec 28;101(52):17889-94. [PubMed][pdf]
Holmes FL. Meselson, Stahl, and the Replication of DNA: A History of ‘The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology’ [Amazon]