Schwarzenegger mouse
n.— «In the United States, the first news media reports of gene doping appeared in the late 1990s, when word got out that “Schwarzenegger mice” were being produced in the lab of H. Lee Sweeney, a molecular physiologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Sweeney, who had been searching for treatments for muscle-wasting diseases, focused his research on a gene that produces a protein called IGF-1, which helps regulate growth. His experiments worked. The mice that had been injected with an extra copy of the IGF-1 gene packed on muscle and became as much as 30 percent stronger than before.» —“Outlaw DNA” by Gretchen Reynolds New York Times June 3, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...