How do transgenic animals help us?
Most transgenic animals are mice. This is because mice have a genome similar to humans (as well as other factors, for example they are very low maintenance). Moreover, physiologic and behavioural tests performed on mice can be extrapolated directly to human disease. For these reasons, transgenic mice play a very important role in the development of medical technology and treatments. Not only is the gene function of mice similar, but so is the physiology, adding another level of valuability to the tests and experiments performed. Additionally, when a mouse has human traits or characteristics after the injection of foreign DNA into the pronuclei, it's genome becomes capable of acquiring human diseases and therefore a credible research technique. This means they almost perfectly mimic human disease, and therefore human reaction to treatments, giving an almost trial and error solution. Mice are being used as models, for example, to study obesity, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, substance abuse, anxiety, ageing, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. They are also used to study different forms of cancer (see Discovery section).