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Animal models of disease can be spontaneous (naturally occurring in animals, or genetically selected to be so, such as in diabetic mice). The increase in knowledge about the genomes of non-human primates and other mammals genetically closer to humans are allowing the production of genetically engineered and clonedThe term clone is derived from kappa;λω&nu the Greek word for "twig". In horticulture, the spelling clon was used until the twentieth century. The final e came into use to indicate the vowel is a "long o" instead of a "short o"; see the refer animal tissues, organs and even animal species which express human diseases, thus leading to a safe way to experiment with real human diseases in animal models.
Animal models of disease can also be induced by physical, chemical or biological means, such as the use of metrazolMetrazol is the commercial trademark of pentamethylenetetrazol, or pentylenetetrazol (PTZ), a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant (another commercial name is Cardiazol). Larger doses cause convulsions, thus it has been used in shock thera (pentylenetetrazol) as an animal model of epilepsyEpilepsy (sometimes referred to as a seizure disorder is a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures. The condition is named from the Greek epilepsia ("a taking hold of or seizing"). It is commonly controlled with medic, infecting animals with pathogens to reproduce human infectious diseases or using ionizing radiationIonizing radiation is radiation in which an individual particle (for example, a photon, electron, or helium nucleus) carries enough energy to ionize an atom or molecule (that is, to completely remove an electron from its orbit). If the individual particle to cause tumors.