What the Oldest Lab Rodents Are Teaching Humans About Staying Young
Photographer: Justin J. Wee for Bloomberg Businessweek; Costumer: Cammi Upton; Prop stylist: Grayson Fisher
Each day technicians at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, check on special groups of mice in their care. The mice are all more than 600 days old, roughly 60 in human years; some are much older. A few may need help reaching their water dispensers, but many are how humans hope to be as we age: “curious, energetic, unbelievably active,” says Nadia Rosenthal, the lab’s scientific director. “It takes them a little longer to run from one side of the cage to the other,” but often “that’s the only difference.”
In medical research, lab mice and rats die for us in great numbers. Sacrificed during or after experiments, they leave us with information that, over the years, has helped us understand diseases, develop medicines and map the functions of particular genes. But some aging-focused research projects require something else from these animals: that they stay alive, and healthy, for as long as possible.