Mice

Fire killed about 500,000 laboratory mice and injured five people in a blaze at a genetic research center that one lab official said would set back scientific research worldwide. Four construction workers and a firefighter were injured in the midday fire at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., the world's leading nonprofit supplier of genetically identical mice used in research on cancer, AIDS, diabetes and other human diseases. Kenneth Paigen, the lab's director-designee, said, "We managed to save what are called the foundation stocks . . . the original genetically defined strains."

Researchers at UC San Diego have invented a microscopic sponge that can mop up toxins, including a drug-resistant staph bacterium and even snake venom. The so-called nanosponge was tested only on mice. It worked well when injected into healthy mice that then were infected with the toxin from a strain of Staphylococcus aureus that has become resistant to multiple antibiotics. About 89% survived the lethal doses. Fewer than half, or 44%, survived when the nanosponge was injected after the infection.

Why are women more prone to autoimmune diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis? A new study in mice points to a possible contributor: different types of bacteria that populate our guts. It goes like this: Different mixes of bacteria reside in the innards of male and female mice. Those bacteria, in turn, affect the chemistry of the animals' bodies -- and, it appears, their risk of autoimmunity. The study, just published in Science , was done by Janet Markle of the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, and colleagues. It's a little complicated, with players that include sex hormones, fatty chemicals, immune cells and a whole host of microscopic life forms.

Friday's National Grilled Cheese Day is a foodie holiday that's of obscure origin but is easy to get behind -- unlike, say, Bread Machine Baking Month (January) or Soy Foods Month (April). The entire month of April has been dubbed Grilled Cheese Month (sorry, soy foods), and it brings out the best in grilled-cheese chefs.  Examples: Brie with bacon from L.A.'s Grilled Cheese Truck ; Fontina and provolone on house-made garlic bread from San Francisco-based the Melt ; and the fried egg-topped croque-madame from La Dijonaise in Culver City.  Occasionally, it also brings out the worst.

Presumably, when people buy antibacterial soap, the idea is to kill bad germs and promote health. But over the years, scientists and public health advocates have worried that triclosan -- a common chemical in antibacterial soap -- may actually do more harm than good. The latest warnings come from a team of researchers who ran a series of tests that showed that triclosan hindered muscle performance in isolated cells and in animals. Writing Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, UC Davis toxicologist Isaac Pessah and colleagues reported that exposure to the chemical in doses similar to what a person or animal might encounter in everyday life, impaired isolated muscle cells' ability to contract; decreased heart function and grip strength in mice; and slowed swimming activity in fathead minnows.

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Ever wonder why there's no birth control pill for men? For starters, it's a math problem: To stop a woman from getting pregnant, all you have to do is block a single egg each month. But a man produces millions of sperm each day -- about 1,000 every time his heart beats. Blocking them all is a much bigger task. This helps explain why no one has come up with a reversible form of birth control for men since the condom was introduced centuries ago. (The first unambiguous description of the prophylactic's use appears in a 1564 writing called "De Morbo Gallico," which describes a syphilis outbreak in Europe that began in France in the 1490s.)

Want to live longer? One of the most sure-fire strategies is caloric restriction . Going on what amounts to a permanent diet has been shown to stave off age-related diseases and death in worms, flies, rodents and monkeys. But caloric restriction isn’t for everyone. Thankfully, scientists have been looking for ways to get the same benefits with less sacrifice. A group of Italian researchers is offering up one potential alternative – water fortified with a cocktail of branched-chain amino acids , or BCAAs for short.

Re "Island Infestation Can't Be Eradicated, Expert Says," June 11: Following the report of the demise of the island fox on San Miguel Island, we now have infected mice on the island. Thanks to our overly zealous custodians of the island who destroyed all the ice plant. The ice plant housed the mice. The mice fed the foxes. The foxes survived. It's not nice to fool around with Mother Nature. BEV ROBERTS Torrance

A drug that has been approved for the treatment of a type of skin cancer since 1999 appears to reverse Alzheimer's symptoms -- in mice.  Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine neuroscientist Gary Landreth and colleagues reported Thursday that bexarotene quickly cleared away beta-amyloid plaque, believed to cause the cognitive deficits of Alzheimer's disease, from the brains of genetically engineered mice.  Mice who received bexarotene...

Researchers at UCLA have genetically engineered tomatoes that, when fed to mice, mimic the beneficial qualities of good cholesterol, according to a new study. In a paper published Tuesday in the Journal of Lipid Research, authors used bacteria to insert genes into the cells of tomato plants, so that they would produce a peptide that mimics the actions of HDL, or "good" cholesterol. Later generations of those genetically engineered tomatoes were frozen, ground up and then fed to female mice who were themselves bred to be highly susceptible to LDL, or "bad" cholesterol.

The multifaceted James Franco will soon add another credit to his résumé: The actor-director-artist-poet is heading to the Great White Way. "We're going to do 'Of Mice and Men' on Broadway. I'm going to play George," the star of "Oz the Great and Powerful” revealed on "The Colbert Report.” This would be Franco's Broadway debut, though not for want of trying. The one-time Oscar host was slated to star opposite Nicole Kidman in a 2011 revival of “Sweet Bird of Youth,” although the production never materialized.

About 30,000 years ago, a tiny mutation arose in a gene known as EDAR and began to spread rapidly in central China, eventually becoming common in the region. This week, scientists at Harvard University offered some explanations for why the EDAR mutation may have been so successful - by observing how it affects mice, animals long used in disease research but never before pressed into service for the study of human evolution. The small change, substituting one chemical letter of DNA for another, may have helped humans in Asia survive crippling heat and humidity by endowing them with extra sweat glands, the scientists reported Thursday in the journal Cell.

Researchers at USC have made mice insensitive to near-freezing temperatures by deactivating select neurons, a development that could one day lead to new treatments for pain in humans. In a study published Tuesday in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers used a bacterial toxin to kill neurons equipped with so-called TRPM8 channels, cellular structures that help relay sensations of cold. (The pathway is also responsible for sensing menthol, the cooling component of mint.) Neurons that sense heat and mechanical pain were left intact, however.

Why are women more prone to autoimmune diseases like lupus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis? A new study in mice points to a possible contributor: different types of bacteria that populate our guts. It goes like this: Different mixes of bacteria reside in the innards of male and female mice. Those bacteria, in turn, affect the chemistry of the animals' bodies -- and, it appears, their risk of autoimmunity. The study, just published in Science , was done by Janet Markle of the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, and colleagues. It's a little complicated, with players that include sex hormones, fatty chemicals, immune cells and a whole host of microscopic life forms.

Despite all the attempts to legislate America's way out of obesity with food regulations, a new study out of UC Irvine suggests that there could be more to fat than sloth and supersized sodas. Pregnant mice exposed to a chemical commonly used in PVC -- best known as the material used for piping but also a component in home furnishings, children's toys, packaging and lots of other everyday items -- gave birth to offspring with a tendency to obesity. And their offspring's offspring, which were never exposed to the chemical.

Disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer's disease have proved elusive. However, a study in mice published this week suggests that a treatment strategy relying on gene therapy may be worth pursuing. Researchers at the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco found that mice and humans with Alzheimer's disease have unusually low levels of an enzyme called EphB2 in the parts of the brain that control memory. EphB2 plays an important role in fostering communication between brain cells.

Cocaine addiction is difficult to treat. Doctors have no specific therapies for the addiction. However, an experiment in mice has produced promising results on a vaccine approach. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical Center created a vaccine by using elements of a common cold virus that elicit an immune response and linking it to a chemical that is similar in structure to cocaine. They injected the vaccine into ordinary mice and found a strong immune response was generated by the vaccine.

Anyone who's gone to too many rock concerts or worked with loud machinery for too long  (or listened to too many kazillion-decibel advertisements at a movie theater) may eventually pay the price: hearing loss caused by damage to tiny, sound-transmitting cells in the inner ear. Researchers now report they can regenerate some of these crucial  “hair cells” in the inner ears of mice and restore noise-induced damage to some extent. It's something that hearing scientists have been hoping for ages (though we will avoid using the term “holy grail”)

The Consumer Electronics Show has a dizzying array of tech accessories, but every once in a while, a few of those find a way to stand out. Here are some of the ones that caught my eye. Lucien Element's $650 iPhone 5 case In a world of iPhones, there are cases and then there are cases . Lucien Elements makes the latter, specializing in luxury cases for iPhone users who want to protect their phones with style. Their top product at CES? A $650 crocodile-skin case with studs for the edges of the iPhone.