There is a new mouse in the laboratory for the study of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). And there will soon be more: mice carrying a mutant version of human TAR DNA binding protein 43 (TDP-43) will likely herald a veritable herd of mice with various TDP-43 mutations. Robert Baloh and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, reported on the first published transgenic model of TDP-43 proteinopathy, describing a mouse that shows features of both ALS and frontotemporal lobar degeneration with ubiquitin aggregates (FTLD-U), another TDP-43 proteinopathy that sometimes co-presents with ALS [1]. Surprisingly, the mouse lacks one common feature of human disease: although there are ubiquitinated protein inclusions in the animal's neurons, TDP-43 is not a component of the aggregates. This could indicate that TDP-43 aggregates are not central to disease -or simply suggest that the model is a poor facsimile of human disease.John Trojanowski of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the current research, applauded the publication. "This will energize the field," he said. Several laboratories are working on their own TDP-43 mouse models; Trojanowski joked good-naturedly that he was "crushed" to see Baloh's group make it into print publication first.However, researchers warned against overinterpreting early results, particularly since the current publication lacked control mice overexpressing wild-type human TDP-43. "We have to be incredibly cautious as far as what these results mean," said Leonard Petrucelli of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, who also was not a participant in the PNAS paper. "I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that it is an ALS model per