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The multitudes of mice busily skittering about on mouse-business in the Medical Center's Transgenic Mouse Facility have no idea how meticulously they are watched over and pampered. Each week, they get a new domicile-a sterile plastic box, complete with fresh- ground corncob bedding heat-blasted in an autoclave. They drink water with a trace of germ-killing hydrochloric acid and eat the best possible chow. These mice are among some 30,000 housed in facilities in the Levine Science Research Center and the Vivarium. They live in such scrupulously sterile splendor because their altered genes harbor fundamental secrets that could help save millions of human lives. Click here for the rest of the article.