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Vadim Gladyshev is asking lab scientists to whip out their smartphones and take photos. Not selfies, exactly, but snapshots of their lab mice. It’s a fiddly task, Gladyshev, who studies aging at Harvard Medical School, admits: mice move fast, and need to be kept still for the camera. He suggests grabbing them with one hand or taking them by the tail while they use their front paws to hold a rod. “It is difficult to standardize conditions,” he says. “People get very creative.”
The impromptu photo shoots are all part of a crowdsourced effort to develop an algorithm that can help predict the biological age of a mouse from its mug shot—information that could help researchers studying aging understand the connection between a person’s biology and how old he or she looks. “We all have two different ages,” says Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the ...
