aTRACKtive: Developing methods to identify individual mice from birth

A team led by Dr Adam Polak at the Fraunhofer UK Research Ltd has been awarded £100k to deliver a system that will enable individual mice to be identified from birth and tracked over their lifetime. Sponsored by MRC Harwell and the National Mouse Genetics Network members Cardiff University and King's College London, this system must be non-invasive and non-toxic to the mouse and is amenable to automated tracking technology and home cage monitoring.

The team will develop low-cost non-invasive tracking tags containing non-toxic dyes and phosphors that produce a visible colour response under illumination invisible to mice. The different colours of tags will permit the identification of four or more mice per cage, both by the human eye and using automated video tracking techniques. This means that individual mice can be identified and tracked from birth and throughout their lifetime, maximising the data obtained from them, and enabling animal welfare to be monitored from birth in a way that has not previously been easy to do due to the practical and welfare concerns associated with current options to identify individual mice such as tattooing.

Full details about this CRACK IT Challenge can be found on the Innovation Platform website.