Throughout the years, mice have proven to be inval...
Throughout the years, mice have proven to be invaluable model organisms for biomedical research, allowing researchers to investigate disorders by manipulating the environment or the genome. Unlike their human counterparts, mice can be studied in a carefully controlled environment. It is also relatively easy for researchers to manipulate diet composition, food availability, exercise, and other environmental factors that can contribute to differences in physiological outcomes in mice. In addition to being relatively inexpensive, fast to reproduce, and easy to maintain compared to other mammalian models, mice are also remarkably similar to humans in terms of their physiology and genetics. Mice and humans share approximately the same number of genes and exhibit extensive synteny. Because of their genetic similarity to humans, mice have been used to pioneer genetic manipulation technologies, such as gene overexpression and gene knockout and knockdown models at the whole-organism level or in specific tissues. These technological breakthroughs in genetics research have fueled several decades of rapid discovery and knowledge expansion in many biomedical fields. The ability to manipulate both genetic and environmental variables with relative ease has made mice one of the most widely used in vivo models in biomedical research today. 9. Does every sentence contribute to the main idea of the paragraph?