10 interesting facts about rats.

[jhope]

10. Although there are many different species of rats, the one most people associate with the word are Brown or Norway rats. Likely originating in China, the largest specimens can top 2.2lbs. Norway rats plague cities such as New York (where population estimates vary wildly- from a few hundred thousand to a few hundred million depending on your source) and London and have pervaded nearly every corner of the globe with the rare exceptions of Arctic and Antarctic areas, the Canadian province of Alberta, and pockets of New Zealand. The white albino rats used in laboratories and kept as pets are domesticated versions of this species.


http://listverse.com/2012/04/09/top-...ts-about-rats/

[Wise Young]

Originally Posted by jhope

10. Although there are many different species of rats, the one most people associate with the word are Brown or Norway rats. Likely originating in China, the largest specimens can top 2.2lbs. Norway rats plague cities such as New York (where population estimates vary wildly- from a few hundred thousand to a few hundred million depending on your source) and London and have pervaded nearly every corner of the globe with the rare exceptions of Arctic and Antarctic areas, the Canadian province of Alberta, and pockets of New Zealand. The white albino rats used in laboratories and kept as pets are domesticated versions of this species.

http://listverse.com/2012/04/09/top-...ts-about-rats/

jhope,

The three most commonly used rat strains for spinal cord injury are:

Long-Evans Hooded rat. These rats have a black hood over the head and splotches of black against a white background. Long-Evans rats are outbred and a robust strain, developed by Joseph Long and Herbert Evans at University of California in Berkeley between 1915 and 1920. They published 25 papers from 1920-1922 on the estrous cycle of the Long-Evans rat. The original strain came from matings between several white rats and a wild gray male caught in Berkeley. The gray male is likely to a Norwegian gray rat the Dr. Long trapped on the banks of Strawberry Creek winding through the Berkeley campus. When we developed the Impactor model of spinal cord injury, we chose to use the Long-Evan's hooded rat to standardize the model on. This was because it was not an albino rat (which has genetic abnormalities) and it is a more intelligent and robust rat.

Sprague-Dawley rat. These albino rats are outbred and variable from source to source. Established around 1925 by Dr. Robert Worthington Dawley, a physical chemist from University of Washington, the name Sprague-Dawley comes from the name of his first wife and his own name. The strain comes from an originally a hooded half white rat that was mated to a white rat and then mated to female offsprings for 7 successive generations. The rats were subsequently selected for high lactation, rapid growth, vigor, good temperament, and high resistance to arsenic trioxide. Dawson formed a company that was called ARS/Sprague-Dawley, Inc. After he died in 1949, this company became Harlan Sprague-Dawley. Harlan is one of several major animal providers in the United States. The Sprague-Dawley is one of the most popular laboratory rats in the United States.

Fischer 344 rat. This is an inbred strain of albino rats that was developed at the Crocker Institute to study cancer. In 1919, Maynie Rose Curtis was trying to find ways to make rats live longer so that they could be used to study sarcoma formation at Crocker Institute at Columbia University in New York. She and her colleague Frederick Dabney Bullock noted that rats from some vendors tended to develop sarcomas more than others. So, they obtained breeding pairs from four breeders, named August, Fischer, Marshall, and Zimmerman. These were all black nonagouti piebald but carriers of the albino gene. Wilhelmina Francis Dunning (1904-1995) joined Curtis after obtaining her PhD in 1932 from the University of Maine The first pedigreed rat strain made by this group was from mating number 344 and hence the strain name Fischer 344. The Crocker Institute held over 10,000 rats and characterized over 100,000 rats with a complete pedigree and case history for each. In 1960, the Crocker Institute was razed to make room for a new School of Law and International Affairs. The Fischer 344 rat is very popular because cells can be transplanted from one individual to another without any immune rejection. At Rutgers, we created the first GFP Fischer 344 rat that allow green cells to be transplanted from rat to rat without immune rejection [1].

Wise.

1. Marano, J. E., Sun, D., Zama, A. M., Young, W., & Uzumcu, M. (2008). Orthotopic transplantation of neonatal GFP rat ovary as experimental model to study ovarian development and toxicology. Reproductive toxicology (Elmsford, NY), 26(3-4), 191–196. doi:10.1016/j.reprotox.2008.09.001

[nauticalmike]

[QUOTE=Wise Young;1542051]jhope,

The Fischer 344 rat is very popular because cells can be transplanted from one individual to another without any immune rejection. At Rutgers, we created the first GFP Fischer 344 rat that allow green cells to be transplanted from rat to rat without immune rejection [1].

Wise.

What are "green" cells?

[jhope]

Thank you Dr Wise. I have been considering some ,way out side the box thinking. Human stem cells have been grafted into rats for awhile now. I was thinking if we genetically engineered a rat, that's neurogenic cells would not be rejected by humans, and created an environment in the human injury site conducive to growth in rats we would get robust regeneration. I am embarrassed to post such a ridiculous idea that has many reasons to not be feasible but these are the thoughts that a c-6 quad Dentist has that watches too much sci-fi .

[jhope]

stem cells genetically engineered them so that they would glow green under ultraviolet light I believe...

[nauticalmike]

Originally Posted by jhope

stem cells genetically engineered them so that they would glow green under ultraviolet light I believe...

oh...