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Yoda The Mouse Turns 4

Posted by timothy on from the beats-dog-years dept.

ChiralSoftware writes "Through some genetic engineering to reduce insulin output, Yoda the mouse has lived to over four years old, equivalent to 136 human years. Yoda is a third smaller than normal, and gets cold all the time so he must snuggle up with Princess Leia, his cage-mate, but he is alive and full of vigor at the ripe old age of 4. Who's next for insulin reduction?"

4 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Natural genetic mutation, not genetic engineering! by mrgeometry · · Score: 4, Informative

    Audio report on this story (produced for Michigan Radio's Stateside program):

    http://www.michiganradio.org/stateside.asp

    Scroll down to April 9th and listen in Real Player (sorry). The relevant bit starts at the 32:00 mark. (Yeah, the whole thing is an hour long... sorry.)

    Anyway, this report was produced locally here in Ann Arbor, by a friend of mine who interviewed Dr. Miller in person. The whole point is that the dwarf/long-lived mutation is in fact naturally occuring, **not** the result of genetic engineering.

    (Also, the audio report suggests that the colony is much larger, but perhaps the older mice are sequestered from the rest of the colony, so the AP report might have that right; hard to say.)

    zach

  2. Re:Lucky Bastard by TheLink · · Score: 2, Informative

    Seems more than a few people here might take 136 years to find someone who would have sex with them. ;)

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  3. Re:Longevity and diet by WolfWithoutAClause · · Score: 3, Informative
    I wonder if it's bleached or brown that they eat; probably makes a difference.

    No, not terribly much. The glycemic index of white rice is 58, brown is 55 (lower is better; but this is a relatively modest difference.)

    Also, a lot of people/magazines will tell you that brown bread has a lower GI than white. Whilst brown bread is higher in vitamins and minerals, it has substantially has the same GI as white (very slightly lower).

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    -WolfWithoutAClause

    "Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
  4. Re:Longevity and diet by Spazmasta · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's also important to note that often "average life expentancies" produces confusing implications, because "average life expectancy" doesn't necessarily mean how old someone will be before he/she dies of old age, but is simply the AVERAGE of people dying of old age as well as people dying of car accidents, cancer, jumping off cliffs, etc.

    Thus, such variations in life expectancies could very well be caused by cultural factors like smoking and car use instead of the source of carbohydrates (wheat vs rice).