Professor SAPOLSKY: You look at a lab rat and you look at what points in its life is it willing to try something new.

NPR: Does Age Quash Our Spirit of Adventure?

When Dr. Taylor built a rat heart in a lab dish five years ago, she used a pacemaker to make it beat.

WSJ: Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab

He was approached in 2009 by a U.S. scientist, Doris Taylor, who had already grown a beating rat heart in the lab while at the University of Minnesota.

WSJ: Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab

The biggest reward of Amgen's early genome work, however, may be the osteoporosis drug dubbed AMG 162, based on the bone gene that Amgen lab coats were so surprised to discover in fetal rat intestines in 1995.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas

The rat analogy comes from modern economics, a discipline that classes itself as lab science, precious and pure.

FORBES: Morality First: The End of Behaviorism