WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, STEVENFRUITSMAAK
Lab rats are finally catching a break. The Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee has received a 5-year, $13 million grant to establish a National Center for Systems Biology, reports Newswise. The first task of the Center will be to create a virtual lab rat—a computer model that will gather all available research data for rats into one place.
By integrating the widespread data into a single model, researchers will be able to better understand rat physiology as a whole and to predict how multiple systems will interact in response to environmental and genetic causes of disease. They will also be able to input multiple causes at once and observe the virtual rat’s physiological response. The research will focus on diseases including hypertension, renal disease, ...
