Masked, capped, gowned, and gloved, Lin Allsbury plucks and places with practiced dexterity the wriggling pink baby mice from one clear plastic bin to another. Grasping each mouse gently with sterilized forceps, she zips them unerringly from old home to new, religiously following the intricate weekly cage-changing ritual. The technician allows no bare human hand ever to touch these tiny priceless creatures. Mouse-by-squirming-mouse, she lowers each onto a bed of pulverized corncobs heat-blasted to sterility in an auto-clave. As each baby lands, the mother mouse busily nestles her brood into the cotton nesting material provided for new mothers. Transfer complete, Allsbury clamps down the germ-filtering lid on the micro-isolator cage. The mother mouse takes a quick sip of water treated with germ-killing hydrochloric acid, nibbles a bit of mouse chow and nestles down into the fastidiously prepared cage.

But Allsbury still faces a formidable task, as she pulls another pair of forceps from a disinfectant solution. Enveloped by the delicate rustlings of throngs of mice, she continues to work her way through stainless steel racks holding hundreds of cages, each housing several mice, and all demanding the same meticulous manipulations to ensure the same antiseptic transfer.

These mice—among some 30,000 housed in Duke's Transgenic Mouse Facility—live in such scrupulously sterile splendor because their altered genes harbor fundamental secrets that could help save millions of human lives. The tinkered-up DNA within these mice could yield a better understanding of cancer, genetic disorders, drug addiction, heart disease and immune malfunctions—an incredible promise for such modest-looking creatures.

Such medical potential explains why Duke's Comprehensive Cancer Center, funded by the National Cancer Institute, heavily supports Duke's mouse facilities, and why the medical center spends considerably of its own funds each year to subsidize them. What's more, the investment will surely rise. The scientific explosion of experiments with such exotic mice is producing a population explosion of animals, requiring a multi-million-dollar investment by the university for new facilities to house the 60,000 mice needed within a decade. If the trend continues, 21st century Duke could be home to more mice than humans.