If one wants to study Zika,
And one wonders where to pick a
Model animal for one's tests,
No one'll answer your request.
For, until just about now,
Nobody could tell one, how
To infect a mouse or rat
To reliably serve for that.
Not long ago, they found that rodents
Had a chromosome so potent,
That it inhibited infection
By the virus's injection.
But now Dr. Shannan Rossi,
Who at Texas U. a prof. is,
Wrote a learned paper in
The Journal of Tropical Medicine:
He engineered mice that this gene lack,
And thus succumb to the attack
Of the Zika virus. Model's here,
Or, at least, it so appears.
So there is hope that this strain
Will help the illness to contain,
And that future generations
Will be free of Zika's abomination...