Off-the-shelf, made-to-measure mouse models of any human disease could be available sooner than you think. Medical researchers will be able to select their perfect model from a catalogue of mutants covering every single gene, specialists say. Researchers who run the world's biggest mouse archives met in Bar Harbor, Maine, on 19-21 November to discuss how to handle the 300,000 or so new lines of mice that could be generated over the next two decades, expanding their stocks by almost a hundredfold. "We will be hit by the start of the deluge within five years," predicts Steve Brown, head of the Mouse Genome Centre in Harwell, UK. International consortia of mouse geneticists have already announced plans to launch the first large-scale programmes to generate mutants systematically, gene bygene (see'It'saknockout', below).
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