/ Mutations Content for UC Davis en /blog/not-all-clones-are-created-equal <p><span>Plant scientists use clones for their research, but they’re different from the kind people grow from cuttings. Scientists grow these clones in Petri dishes by the thousands, along with a potential headache: The resulting little plants can carry loads of mutations that must be culled out for research to continue.</span></p> April 24, 2026 - 11:12am Andy Fell /blog/not-all-clones-are-created-equal /news/essential-mouse-genes-could-guide-human-precision-medicine <p>About one-third of 1751 genes studied in the first comprehensive survey of the mouse genome are essential to life, according to research by an international collaboration including the UC Davis Mouse Biology Program. Mutations of these genes cause death at the embryo stage. Many of them have counterparts in the human genome, so understanding why these genes are so vital could help prioritize human genes for study.</p> September 14, 2016 - 3:03pm Andy Fell /news/essential-mouse-genes-could-guide-human-precision-medicine