In doing research on the food allergy model in mice, transgenetic mice such as il4 gain of function mice are used as a model to do food allergy research. Mice with il4 gain of function are more susceptible to allergens, which makes sensitizing them for food allergy studies easier. In the case of the study that I've done over the summer, the procedure for sensitizing mice is to slowly expose the mice to the allergen along with SEB and then cause an anaphylactic shock by introducing them to a large amount of allergen. This would cause the mice's temperature to drop, which can be measured using an internal probe. The challenge to this model is the high variability. Because this is an animal model, the failure rate can be quite high, and the amount of temperature drop can vary wildly. This, I found out when I had to present the results of what I did over the summer to my PI who is an organic chemistry professor. The professor asked me why the error margin was so high, and I tried to explain that in these organismal models, the error margin is always relatively high compared to models with cells or proteins. Another problem with this model is that it is hard to do with many sample sizes. Because the measurement occurs in less than an hour, this would mean that the limit of how many samples is determined by how quickly oral gavage can be performed on a conscious mouse. This limits the size to about 25 mice at most, because oral gavages can take quite a long time to perform, especially if the mice are not cooperating. However, the benefit of doing this mouse model is that it is standardized across the field and it is relatively easy and inexpensive to do, especially for a lab that already works extensively with mice.
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