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A Chinese Buddhist priest, In-gen by name, who afterward erected the Obaku temple (at Uji, near Kyoto), came over from China in the autumn of the third year of Shô-ô, in the reign of Gokômyô-in, the one hundred and eleventh emperor (1654). At that time, he brought with him a pair of black-eyed white mice as his pets. In Japan, the followers of the priest daily increased in numbers and his temple became full of pilgrims. Then, the mice were given to an enthusiastic applicant whose earnest request the priest could not refuse. The man took good care of the mice, and the more he prized them the richer he became. From Chingan-Sodategusa (The breeding of curious varieties of the mouse), by Chôbei Zeniya, 1787. Cited by Tokuda, M (1935), An eighteenth century Japanese guide-book on mouse-breeding. J Hered 26:481-484.

Thus, In-gen imported to Japan mutant mice that had been collected for hundreds of years in China, and Chingan-Sodategusa describes the results of breeding mice with unusual coat colors. The mice from Japan and elsewhere were later collected in Europe, and prized mutants gave rise to the Mouse Fancy in the United Kingdom toward the end of the nineteenth century. These mice eventually made their way to the United States, where successive efforts by Clarence Little and others led to the establishment of the laboratory mouse and of inbred strains.

From its origins of developmental genetics based on visible characteristics in coat color, morphology, and behavioral characteristics, emerged a rich history of mouse embryology. This history encompassed not only methods for culturing embryos before or after implantation into the uterus but also the ability to mix cells of different genotypes that led to the production of the first chimeric mice almost 50 years ago. Considerable advances in lineage and microscopy techniques have allowed a much deeper understanding of developmental processes underlying axis and organ formation. The observation that teratocarcinomas, tumors of embryonic origin, could be passaged to cre-ate embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells propelled the idea that cells cultured from the early embryo could be used to colonize various lineages. Embryonic stem (ES) cells originated from this line of work, and their ability to contribute to the mouse germline together with increasingly sophisticated techniques for manipulating the mouse genome have contributed to the advancement of a high-resolution genetic model organism, able to model many aspects of human disease.

This special issue brings together a range of reviews and articles covering various aspects of mouse development. Taken together, these articles show how such studies have grown since In-gen brought his mice to Japan several hundred years ago. Indeed, the better care we take of the mice, the richer we become (in knowledge and perhaps otherwise too!).

Philippe Soriano

Guest Editor

These articles are provided free online by Wiley-Liss, Inc., the publishers of Developmental Dynamics, and the American Association of Anatomists, as a service to the scientific community.

Page updated September 7, 2006