Mice are cheap, live fairly short lives (a big plus if you're studying hereditary things), easy to handle, genetically quite similar to us, and research mice have been bred to the point of near0uniformity in genetic terms, making for greater reproducibility. Additionally, there are transgenci mice that can express human genes, and mice with no immune systems which are ideal for studying disease.
> research mice have been bred to the point of near[-]uniformity in genetic terms, making for greater reproducibility.
Doesn't that also introduce a bias toward experimental treatments that happen to work well with the genetics of research mice, but not those of other mice, vs. treatments that don't work well on research mice, but that mice with different genes respond well to?
In other words, would treatment that works really well for research mice but not the majority of other mice be able to make it through mouse trials without anyone finding that out?
Are there different lines of mice to mitigate that? Is that kind of genetic fluke uncommon?
Yes, there are many (potential) problems caused by the homogeneous nature of research mice. It's an under-considered variable in a lot of research, and, from my knowledge, hasn't really been studied until recently.
Mice are cheap, live fairly short lives (a big plus if you're studying hereditary things), easy to handle, genetically quite similar to us, and research mice have been bred to the point of near0uniformity in genetic terms, making for greater reproducibility. Additionally, there are transgenci mice that can express human genes, and mice with no immune systems which are ideal for studying disease.