About 5% of the genome in both humans and mice has changed little for millennia, and about half of that 5%is noncoding.

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There was little change in micro-organisms present in the mice who had had sham operations, even though the group on the low-calorie diet lost just as much weight as the mice who had had the bypass surgery.

BBC: Bacteria find 'key to treating obesity without surgery'

The story is about two mice named Sniff and Scurry, and two little men named Hem and Haw.

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It got its start in 1929 when Clarence Cook Little, a Harvard-trained geneticist, developed inbred strains of mice in order to study cancer.

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