io9: mice

Being Lazy Isn't Your Fault — It's Genetic!

Michael Reilly — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:00:00 PDT

Your desire to lie around the house isn't because you're a slacker: it's in your genes. New research from scientists at the University of North Carolina shows that there's finally a good reason why some people would rather read comic books and play video games all day than, say, go run a marathon. According to kinesiologist Timothy Lightfoot and colleagues, there's a set of at least 23 genes that control the drive to be physically active in mice. Though he's yet to run the same genetic tests on humans, Lightfoot says he has reason to believe it will hold true for us, too.

According to a release on Lightfoot's work:

"Can you be born a couch potato? In exercise physiology, we didn't used to think so, but now I would say most definitely you can," said Lightfoot.

Of course, loungers don't get off the hook entirely — Lightfoot's study showed that only half the difference between highly active mice and lazier mice could be attributed to their genetics. So an animal's environment — in people's case, whether they live in a 4-story walk up, or dig ditches for a living — is going to have a big impact on how active they are. But Lightfoot says the evidence is piling up that there's more to being lazy than we thought.

Subsequent studies have led the team to suspect that genetic differences are having a profound affect on mouse activity levels by causing significant differences in their brains.
"More and more what we are seeing is differences in brain chemistry. We are really convinced now that the difference is in the brain," Lightfoot said. "There is a drive to be more active."

I love science.

Source: EurekAlert

Genetic Engineers Create Mice With Proto-Wings

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:20:54 PST

Mice and bats like this one share a genetic ancestor, and now they may become one species again. Yesterday, scientists announced they'd engineered mice with proto-bat wings. Researchers added bat genes to the mouse genome, and the results were "mice with abnormally long forelimbs." Those long limbs are the first evolutionary step towards wings. More importantly, towards mice with wings. Or people.

According to Science Daily:

Dr. Richard Behringer describes the significance of his finding as such: "Darwin suggested that "successive slight modifications" would ultimately result in the evolution of diverse limb morphologies, like a hand, wing, or fin. The genetic change we engineered in mice may be one of those "slight modifications" to evolve a mammalian wing."

Sign me up for the wings. After I modify my bones to be hollow and my body to be about an eighth of its size.

Molecular Evolution [Science Daily]

We Have Engineered You to Enjoy Being Eaten

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 07:30:50 PST

No mouse should look into that "I'm gonna chomp you" face and not run squeaking in the other direction. And yet a mouse has done it, thanks to a team of Japanese researchers who genetically engineered it to not fear cats.

Scientists claim the cat-friendly mouse they built (pictured) is proof that some fears are written in our genes. So when are they going to knock out the human gene for fearing oppression and create a race of super-obedient service workers? Image by Ko and Reiko Kobayakawa, Tokyo U, via Associated Press. Genetically-engineered mice [via National Geographic]