Our mission is to advance medical and biological research by providing the scientific community with standardized,
high quality metabolic and physiologic phenotyping services for mouse models of diabetes, diabetic
complications, obesity and related disorders on live mice.
The four Centers are housed at outstanding academic institutions, staffed by experts in state-of-the-art technology.
Researchers can ship mice to one of the Centers and obtain on a fee-for-service basis a range of complex exams used
to characterize mouse metabolism, blood composition including hormones, energy balance and physical activity, eating
and exercise, insulin resistance, organ function, metabolic fluxes and morphology, physiology,
histology and measures of diabetic complications in heart, kidney, vasculature, eye, etc.
Many tests are done in living animals and are designed to elucidate subtle to complex traits that
would define models of metabolic disease.
The development of transgenic technology and gene targeting protocols has resulted in numerous mouse lines with specific
phenotypes and well-defined DNA structural changes. Candidate genes for diabetes, obesity and other disorders of metabolism
have been identified and transgenic mice are being generated using this technology. By broadening the availability of
sophisticated metabolic phenotyping, we hope to help investigators identify and study new mouse models that will lead
to an improved understanding of these complex diseases.
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