Virtual Varmints

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

By  Rob Wright

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee are developing virtual varmints for disease research. Daniel Beard, a computational biologist, refers to this as the "Virtual Physiological Rat" project. Apparently, virtual rats are being developed from data gathered from live rat experiments, offering researchers insight into the mix of genetic and environmental risk factors of cardiovascular disease. These virtual rats might provide researchers with a more integrated view than live rats.

How Does it Work?
If you are anything like me, you are probably trying to wrap your head around the concept of virtual rats and how they work. We have other virtually based products — amusement rides and flight simulators — so why not virtual rats? Through the use of systems biology, lab experiments are integrated with computer modeling to learn how entire physiological systems operate in health and disease. System biologists make models, which try to mimic processes in living cells. Then, they use experiments to test how the models predict reality. By changing various parameters in the model, systems biologists can explore questions not often tested in the traditional model. Other benefits of the virtual rat include better data analysis, increased speed in conducting research, and more precision in hypothesis development. In addition, the decreased utilization of live rats in research means less money spent on the housing, feeding, breeding, and disposal of actual rats. Unfortunately for animal rights activists, the aim of the virtual rat project is not to get rid of living lab rat experimentation, but to conduct more efficient animal research. With this new project, Beard hopes to uncover new information on human diseases like heart failure and high blood pressure, which are challenging to study because they don’t have simple cause-and-effect relationships, like that of animal behavior experimentation.

Sniffy The Virtual Rat
The virtual rat concept is not new. Sniffy Pro is a suite of computer software used for teaching the psychology of learning. It simulates a rat in a Skinner box and can be used to run animal behavior conditioning experiments without the drawbacks of using a real laboratory rat. Beard’s virtual rat, however, takes virtual rat experimentation to a new level. The team intends to create computer simulations of normal functioning rats using tissue samples and live rats with known genomes. By measuring functions of the rats’ healthy hearts, kidneys, skeletal muscles, and blood vessels, they will better be able to characterize how the rat cardiovascular system works normally. Once they have the virtual model of a physiologically healthy rat, Beard’s team will measure cardiovascular function in live rats whose genes have been linked to diseases and disease symptoms. Adding this detailed disease information to the computer models should result in a sophisticated database that can compare a rat’s genes to its molecular functions and ultimately predict its state of cardiovascular health. The benefit to humans is a better understanding of how cardiovascular disease progresses. Rats stand to benefit as well, as fewer live rats will be utilized in animal testing. Sounds like a win-win.