At 15, Ron Germain cared for white mice kept on a ping-pong table in his basement. " You couldn't just buy inbred mice at the pet store, " he recalls, " but I had a connection. " With his C57BL/6 and A/J strains, he attempted to cure graft-versus-host disease with thymic transplants. His mother would supplement these experiments by driving him to Rockefeller University, where the young Germain ...