Rodents News

April 20, 2025

Top Headlines

Deadly Rodent-Borne Hantavirus Is an Emerging Disease With Pandemic Potential

Apr. 11, 2025 — Virginia Tech researchers seek to understand the environmental factors that influence the distribution of hantavirus in rodent populations across the United ...

Tiny Musky Rat-Kangaroos Hold the Key to Explain Why 'Roos Hop

Mar. 19, 2025 — To understand why kangaroos hop -- a rarity among animals -- researchers have studied the musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus), a diminutive marsupial that weighs only 500 grams but is the last living representative of its family and part ...

Efficient Development of Drugs With Fewer Mice

Mar. 18, 2025 — New active ingredients such as antibodies are usually tested individually in laboratory animals. Researchers have now developed a technology that can be used to test around 25 antibodies simultaneously in a single mouse. This should not only speed ...

Bite-Size Clue May Help Rediscover the Missing Desert Rat-Kangaroo

Feb. 25, 2025 — An intriguing native Australian rat-kangaroo, thought to be probably extinct, may still be running around in the inhospitable remote Sturt Stony Desert -- and researchers have discovered new details about its feeding habits that might help to find ...

Latest Headlines

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How the Brain Balances Risk and Reward in Making Decisions

Feb. 19, 2025 — Research in mice identifies brain circuitry that supports certain reward-based ...

A Treatment-Resistant, Severe Type of Asthma Successfully Modeled in Mice

Feb. 18, 2025 — Researchers are tackling neutrophilic asthma, successfully developing one of the first mouse models of the ...

Researchers Discover How Opsin 3, a Light-Sensitive Brain Protein, Regulates Food Consumption in Mice

Feb. 14, 2025 — Scientists discovered years ago that the hypothalamus -- which helps to manage body temperature, hunger, sex drive, sleep and more -- includes ...

Mouse Study Finds Impaired Cell Development: Intermittent Fasting Could Be Unsafe for Teenagers

Feb. 14, 2025 — A recent study reveals that age plays a significant role in the outcomes of intermittent fasting. Researchers discovered that chronic intermittent ...

Drug Reverses Groin Hernias in Male Mice Without Surgery, Shows Promise in Humans

Feb. 5, 2025 — By age 75, a noteworthy 50% of men develop an inguinal (groin) hernia. Although common, the cause of these hernias is unknown, and the only treatment ...

New Study Model With Clues to Anti-Aging

Feb. 4, 2025 — Scientists have created genetically-engineered mice that could help accelerate anti-aging ...

Scientists Unveil Surprising Human Vs Mouse Differences in a Major Cancer Immunotherapy Target

Jan. 3, 2025 — Much of our knowledge of the protein PD-1, a leading cancer treatment target, comes from studies in mice. In a comprehensive assessment of PD-1, ...

CAST Mouse Model: A Crucial Tool for Future COVID-19 Outbreaks

Dec. 6, 2024 — Researchers have identified the first mouse strain that is susceptible to severe COVID-19 without the need for genetic modification. This development marks a pivotal step forward in infectious ...

What a Gut Fungus Reveals About Symbiosis and Allergy

Nov. 27, 2024 — A fungus discovered in the mouse stomach may hold a key to fungal evolution within the gastrointestinal tract, according to new research. The finding suggests that preclinical studies until now have ...

Cigarette Smoke Alters Microbiota, Aggravates Flu Severity

Nov. 20, 2024 — A new study shows that cigarette-smoke induced changes to the microbiota resulted in increased severity of disease in mice infected with influenza A ...

Scientists Recreate Mouse from Gene Older Than Animal Life

Nov. 18, 2024 — An international team of researchers has achieved an unprecedented milestone: the creation of mouse stem cells capable of generating a fully developed mouse using genetic tools from a unicellular ...

Generation of Rat Offspring from Ovarian Oocytes by Cross-Species Transplantation

Nov. 15, 2024 — Attempts to obtain eggs and offspring using oocytes in ovary have been made for keeping desirable traits in livestock, preserving human fertility, etc. Ovarian transplantation, one of those methods, ...

Study of Mountaineering Mice Sheds Light on Evolutionary Adaptation

Nov. 8, 2024 — Highland deer mice and their lowland cousins ventured on a simulated seven-week ascent to 6,000 meters. By tracking how the mice responded to cold stress and progressively lower oxygen levels, the ...

Mice Tails Whip Up New Insights Into Balance and Neurodegenerative Disease Research

Nov. 6, 2024 — Why do mice have tails? The answer to this is not as simple as you might think. Research has shown that there's more to the humble mouse tail than previously assumed. Using a novel experimental ...

Male Mice Use Female Mice to Distract Aggressors and Avoid Conflict

Oct. 15, 2024 — Researchers tracked the behavior of mice using machine learning to understand how they handle aggressive behavior from other mice. The researchers' findings show that male mice deescalate ...

New Mouse Models Offer Valuable Window Into COVID-19 Infection

Oct. 1, 2024 — Scientists have developed six lines of humanized mice that can serve as valuable models for studying human cases of ...

Pigs May Be Transmission Route of Rat Hepatitis E to Humans

Sep. 25, 2024 — New research suggests that pigs may function as a transmission vehicle for a strain of the hepatitis E virus (HEV) common in rats that has recently been found to infect ...

The Curious Immune Cells Caught Between Worlds

Sep. 24, 2024 — Scientists have uncovered critical differences between how innate-like T cells mature in humans and mice. Early in life, most innate-like T cells in the human thymus aren't able to use all of ...

Spiny Mice Point the Way to New Path in Social Neuroscience

Sep. 11, 2024 — Scientists zeroed in on brain circuitry powering the desire of spiny mice to live in large groups, opening the door to a new model for the study of complex social behaviors in ...

Researchers Identify Mechanism Underlying Allergic Itching, and Show It Can Be Blocked

Sep. 4, 2024 — Researchers identified a mechanism for why some people will itch from an allergen or mosquito bite exposure, while others will not in a new study, and showed this pathway can be targeted to prevent ...

CRISPR-Based Genome Editing in Nile Grass Rats

Aug. 23, 2024 — A team of researchers has discovered a set of methods that enabled the first successful CRISPR-based genome editing in Nile grass ...

Researchers Call for Genetically Diverse Models to Drive Innovation in Drug Discovery

Aug. 14, 2024 — Researchers unveiled an approach to drug discovery that could revolutionize how we understand and treat diseases. Their commentary explains the limitations of studies using traditional mouse models ...

Live Longer, Die Healthier

Aug. 6, 2024 — Everyone wants to live to a ripe old age, but no one wants to be decrepit. Now, researchers demonstrated a treatment that could lengthen life -- and vigor -- up to the very end. Gerontologists ...

Researchers Are Closing in on a Mouse Model for Late-Onset Alzheimer's

July 24, 2024 — Researchers are working to create the first strain of mice that's genetically susceptible to late-onset Alzheimer's, with potentially transformative implications for dementia ...

Where to Put Head and Tail?

June 18, 2024 — Formation of the body axes is a critical part of embryonic development. They guarantee that all body parts end up where they belong and that no ears grow on our backs. The head-tail axis, for ...

Researchers Create Realistic Virtual Rodent

June 11, 2024 — To help probe the mystery of how brains control movement, scientists have created a virtual rat with an artificial brain that can move around just like a real rodent. The researchers found that ...

New Antibiotic Kills Pathogenic Bacteria, Spares Healthy Gut Microbes

May 29, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new antibiotic that reduced or eliminated drug-resistant bacterial infections in mouse models of acute pneumonia and sepsis while sparing healthy microbes in the mouse ...

Some Mice May Owe Their Monogamy to a Newly Evolved Type of Cell

May 15, 2024 — What makes the oldfield mouse steadfastly monogamous throughout its life while its closest rodent relatives are promiscuous? The answer may be a previously unknown hormone-generating cell. Scientists ...

Promising New Treatment Strategy for Deadly Flu-Related Brain Disorders

May 2, 2024 — Researchers have found that a brain disorder associated with flu (influenza-associated encephalopathy, or IAE) can be caused by the influenza virus entering the brain from the blood via endothelial ...

Test Reveals Mice Think Like Babies

Apr. 26, 2024 — Are mice clever enough to be strategic? A neuroscientist who studies learning in humans and animals, and who has long worked with mice, wondered why rodents often performed poorly in tests when they ...