New Scientist, January 29, 2009
By Sharon Oosthoek
One hundred years ago in a lab at Harvard University, a young zoology student was busily overseeing the breeding of pair after pair of brother and sister mice. The “Mouse Man”, as he was known on campus, was trying to create the first inbred lab animal – a strain of mouse whose genes would be stable and identical. Such a mouse would allow biologists to reliably replicate their experiments for the first time. His professor said it couldn’t be done, but the Mouse Man proved him wrong. We are all indebted to those inbred mice and their descendants, which have helped researchers develop treatments for a wide range of human diseases.
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New Scientist, 5 July 2008
By Sharon Oosthoek
Nature 2.0
Preserving the status quo is no longer an option for conservationists, says Sharon Oosthoek
FOR nearly a decade the forests of British Columbia have been ravaged by an infestation of mountain pine beetles. In March, government experts announced that the pest would soon run out of food. Now comes the hard part – restoring the devastated ecosystem without allowing the beetle to make a comeback. To add to the problem, these forests have been fundamentally altered in recent years by warmer winters, drier summers and polices to prevent fires. Returning them to their former state is not an option – instead conservationists must find a way to create forests that can cope with change.
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New Scientist, 26 April 2008
By Sharon Oosthoek
Livestock auctions are not normally the stuff of headlines, but then it’s not every day that cows as unusual as Dundee Paradise and Dundee Paratrooper are going under the hammer. The dairy cows were due to be sold at Easter Compton cattle market near Bristol, UK, last month, but at the last minute their owner withdrew them, reportedly unsettled by negative media coverage and local opposition.
The problem? The cows’ mother was a clone, conceived in a laboratory from a cell taken from the ear of a prize-winning Holstein in Wisconsin. “A cow created in Frankenstein’s lab,” as one local newspaper put it.
This episode was one of the opening skirmishes in what is shaping up to be a battle on par with that over genetically modified food. This time the issue is the production of meat and milk from cloned animals.
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New Scientist, 23 February, 2008
By Sharon Oosthoek
Pilgrims from England landed on the coast of present-day Massachusetts in 1620 to carve a settlement from a vast and forbidding wilderness. Living cheek by jowl with North America’s wolves, settlers quickly came to fear and loathe these formidable predators, which competed for deer and preyed on livestock. Spurred on by tales of werewolves terrorising the towns and villages of Europe, the Pilgrims and those who came after them set about wiping wolves from the face of the continent. In 1630, their young colony became the first to offer a bounty for every wolf killed. Nearly four centuries later, conservationists are trying to rescue red and eastern wolves from oblivion.
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