Barenaked Mice

Nude mice are the result of a spontaneous mutation first observed in Scotland in 1962. These bizarre creatures have no hair, so they look pink and wrinkled, like elderly aliens.

They are also athymic, which means the thymus is absent. The thymus is the organ responsible for the development of T cells, those all-important soldiers of the immune system. Nude mice are soldier-deficient and are unable to defend themselves against infectious disease. At first, the most remarkable result of being athymic was that they died young. Later on, once researchers figured out how to keep germs out of their cages, the nude mice survived just fine.

What good is a nude mouse? You can study how the immune system works. That is important in itself. But the real starring role for nude mice is in xenotransplantation. Because they don't have the cells they need to reject foreign tissue, they will accept grafts from unrelated mice, and from cats and chickens (they grow feathers!) and lizards and frogs...and humans. Big deal, you say, a mouse with feathers.

It is a big deal. Nude mice will accept grafts of human cancer cells so we can study how to treat human cancers. Because they accept grafts of human cells, they can be used to study viruses that are difficult or impossible to grow in other animal models or in lab dishes, like hepatitis C virus and the human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer.

Why am I writing about nude mice? In a blatant attempt to increase traffic to my blog.

Someone may be looking for something a little more titillating and a little less immunological. I have been frustrated in many attempts to research nude mice. When I Google "nude mouse," I get a lot of "Our All-Nude site is just a mouseclick away..." Imagine my results when I try to find a photo of a nude mouse, or a story about nude mouse models for human diseases. You guessed it, photos of nude models with just the click of a mouse.

Turnabout is fair play.

To those who came to my blog looking for photos of nude models of the human variety: Thanks for visiting. I hope you learned something.