Beginning the Research

Now that I have a topic and narrowed it down to a question, the researching begins.
Genetically modified or transgenic animals and their role in medicine is not something I know much about. I chose the topic knowing the mere facts that genes of animals are changed for the obvious reasons of aesthetics and survival for the animals and humans too. If someone were to ask me what about medicine and transgenic animals, I would not know what to say after the fact that transgenic animals are used towards the field of medicine. This is where my problem begins, but will end as I begin my research.

After a class learning about the different researching tools provided by UB's library, I found many sources, both scholarly and non-scholarly, but reliable. From just reading the titles and summaries of most of these sources, my knowledge about transgenic animals and their impact on medicine has increased that much more. I was fascinated to find that many sources I came across were about transgenic animals and Alzheimer's.

Calcium dysregulation in Alzheimer's disease: Recent advances gained from genetically modified animals is a journal article from "Cell Calcium" about the success of Alzheimer's research because of genetically modified animals. These animals, more specifically, the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease displayed a synaptic dysfunction and behavioral defects of a great abundance of amyloid-beta peptides. These amyloid-beta peptides are the primary reason why cells cannot maintain at an intracellular calcium homeostasis, which causes a loss in cell count. Although it has not yet been discovered why this synaptic dysfunction occurs, the transgenic mouse have already made a great contribution towards cure for Alzheimer's disease, and we all know that Alzheimer's can be a very dangerous disease.