Interviewee: Mario Capecchi. Mouse researcher Mario Capecchi talks about the similarities in mammalian anatomy and physiology. (DNAi Location: Manipulation > Techniques > Model organisms > Interviews > What's nice about the mouse?)

A nice thing about the mouse is that, I mean if you look at the hand, in this hand we have about thirty bones, and if you look at the human hand and the mouse hand, it's the exact same set of thirty bones, they're just slightly different shapes so that the hand of the mouse will look a little different and it'll be a lot smaller. But in terms of the detail, each little bone for example, in this particular finger we have three bones, one here, one here, one here, what are called phalangeal bones, and the mouse will have the exact same phalangeal bones. So whatever we perturb, when we inactivate a gene for example and this little finger disappears, we know now we're in the program for making a little finger, but not only in the mouse but that same program will also be responsible for making the little finger in the human.

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