Anyone who thinks scientists lead a glamorous, exciting life should talk to Jennifer Snyder, a graduate student at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine. During July of 2003, while all her friends were out enjoying themselves, Snyder spent 10 days trying to get 40 laboratory mice to urinate into little plastic tubes. Snyder’s goal was to extract enough genetic material from mouse urine to determine which of the 5,611 genes in a pathogenic strain of E.coli bacteria were turned on, or expressed, in mice with urinary tract infections. The results of her research, conducted in collaboration with scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be published in the November 2004 issue of Infection and Immunity.
