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Genetically Engineered Big-brained Mice

Posted by michael on from the big-brained-cats-needed-to-catch-them dept.

StefanJ writes "'Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?' An item on MSNBC reports that researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston have produced mice with big, convoluted brains by inserting an single extra gene. I am reminded of two pieces of SF: Olaf Stapledon's novel Sirius, about a lab experiment that produces a brainy dog, and Bruce Sterling "Our Neural Chernobyl," in which the country is overrun with cunning coyotes and tribes of raccoons."

2 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Rescaled images by nucal · · Score: 3, Interesting
    In the MSNBC article, they rescaled the brain images to be about the same size - going to the original article (subscription req'd), the brains overexpressing ß-catenin look to be about twice the size of the normal ones.

    The researchers genetically altered the brain cells, but not bone growth - so I wonder whether the increased folding is a response to being crammed into a cranial cavity that is too small.

  2. eh, unlikely to be smarter by mikeee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If such a simple mutation could make you smarter, evolution would have found already. After all, intellegence is an evolutionary advantage, just look at all the chicks us geeks get...

    Quick! Kill those mice before they build the death ray to destroy us!