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Single Gene Gives Mice Three-Color Vision
maynard writes "A study in the peer-reviewed journal Science shows that mice transgenetically altered with a single human gene are then able to see in full tri-color vision. Mice without this alteration are normally colorblind. The scientists speculate that mammalian brains even from animals that have never evolved color vision are flexible enough to interpret new color-sense information with just the simple addition of new photoreceptors. Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-color vision in some women." A sidebar in the article includes a nice illustration of what two-color vs. three-color mice might perceive.
I, for one, welcome our new full-spectrum-observing mice overlords...
http://mag.awn.com/issue8.08/8.08images/goodman02_ PinkyBrain-01.jpg
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
"Such a result is also indicated by a dominant X chromosome mutation that allows for quad-color vision in some women."
Are you kidding me? You know darn well that women can see at least 75 shades of off-white...
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Did they provide gene therapy to the mice which then gained color vision, or did they alter the mice before birth? Is it possible to insert genes into an adult organism and permanently change their DNA structure?
I had my first taste of this recently.
We live in a colour society and think when we point a camera at a target and click we take a faithful picture of it.
I was wrong.
I have pictures taken from a recent concert where the camera saw one colour (blue) but the actual colour was violet, it was strange holding it up and seeing it filtered then moving it out of the way to see the real colour.
does anyone know if there are such limitations with original developed camera film, or is it just not noticed?
liqbase
is it possible to genetically alter humans to make them tetrachromats, thus making them able to see UV like fishes and birds do?
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
That'd be pretty neat. Except that they'd never be able to tell the rest of us what it is like.
Welcome our new 100-million color-seeing overlordesses.
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I'm holding out until I can see Squant: http://negativland.com/squant/index.html
One issue I find interesting in this context is the guy who was colour-blind (that is, he couldn't differentiate colours in certain parts of the spectrum). This guy had synesthaesia, and although he couldn't physically see certain colours, he could experience them through his synesthaesia. He referred to them as "Martian colours".
The interesting implication here is that the GM mice's brains apparently developed with the ability to process the new colours. It would be fair to assume that ordinary mice's brains did not even contain the "concept" or "perception" of red hardwired in, since what would the point be?
Thus, if the converse is true, and human brains develop the same way as mice's, it could be assumed that the brains of people with the *physical* inability to detect certain colours from birth would never develop the mental concept/sensation of those colours. (*) But then, now does this explain "Martian colours"?
(*) (If you're having trouble understanding what I mean, try to imagine what ultraviolet "looks" like. Darklight (UV lamp) special effects don't count; that's *visible* light produced when UV hits special fluorescing material. And you can't "cheat" by imagining in terms of false colours (since that, by definition, is *converting* UV to visible-range colours). No, I want you to try to imagine what colour actual UV light would look like... and you'll fail because you've never directly seen UV light, and the concept isn't wired into your brain).
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you cant believe your eyes
everything to see here please move along
Although their GM mouse made M and L type cones in their retinas, it is still not clear if what they reacted to was only a change in intensity, or if they could see a true difference between the two colors. Normal mouse are essentially colorblind in that region of the spectrum, red triggers the M receptor, but not very much, so you need a brighter red light to stimulate the M receptor equally as greenish light. Since you need a very good control, the test setup was such that normal could not see a difference between the red and green light. Their GM mouse were much more sensitive to red, so to them the red light must have had a much brighter intensity. But that does not mean their brains had adapted themselves to differentiating between red and green light. To test that you would have to measure the sensitivity of the new red receptor and adjust your intensity to that so that the only difference is in the color, not the intensity. The problem offcourse is that you cannot do that same experiment with normal mouse which have a different red sensitivity, and no control == bad science.
So their claim that the GMs mouses brain really processed the red light signal different from the green might be a bit over the top.
(hmm thinking about it, if the GM mouse cannot discern between red and green, there might be a certain redlight intensity where their scores would drop significantly, while the controls would score better. If you cannot find that, my hypothesis is wrong and their claim is right. Now lets see if I can find if they did that test...)
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I'm willing to pay big bucks for mouse, if they can put a gene in those mouse and make them clean up the house,
wash the dishes, mowed the lawn.
It's only a matter of time before someone invents an inexpensive camera that can do a spectral analysis on each pixel, including near-infrared and long ultraviolet wavelengths.
Take that and combine it with a mathematical model of how the human eye sees color and a model of your paper or output device, and you can make a very faithful reproduction, within the limits of the paper or output device of course.
This technology can help normal people see the world as a color-blind person would, which will help industrial designers make sure the color-blind see everything that's important to see, such as the difference between a red "danger" light and a green "okay" light.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I wonder if they will be able to do a similar thing to humans so that we can see in four or more colors. Just imagine how much it would screw up graphics programmers and monitor manufacturers if they had to add a UV channel. Fortunately, people serious about color (like paint manufacturers) consider the full spectrum. And fashion changes so quickly anyway that it wouldn't make a difference at all there.
But just think how interesting kindergarden colorimetry would get. What do you get when you mix ultra-blue and magenta? Quick, figure it out without using a piece of paper.
And now it is the time on slashdot when we dance.
So that's why Nicodemus' eyes glowed...
I don't know about "seeing" but most people can "feel" near-infrared and I can feel what I presume are X-rays when staring at a defective CRT monitor.
The former feels warm, the latter feels like pain on my face and in my eyes. Needless to say I don't recommend you go out and verify the X-Ray test for yourself.
Some blind people who still have eyes can detect daylight and dark cycles without being consciously aware of it. Studies have shown that the human biological clock isn't reset properly by people whose eyes have been removed or damaged in certain ways.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Now if we could sense from DC all the way up to gamma rays and beyond...
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
What do those graphics look like to you?
You can't take the sky from me...
A sidebar in the article includes a nice illustration of what two-color vs. three-color mice might perceive.
... thus explaining why mice show no outward tendencies towards jealousy or violence, and behave in a highly cautious manner at all times.
> Mice without this alteration are normally colorblind.
No. They are dicromats.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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Most bloggers I know are just blue in the balls...
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
...those three colors weren't orange, brown and beige.
I'm in for some gene therapy that would let me see into the UV and infra-red spectrums.
How long until parent groups organize to save all the poor unmodified kids who can no longer compete in hide and seek though?
It shouldn't take long for us to figure out a gene manipulation that will allow us to see auras without all the yogic discipline and practice. This is probably not a good thing... I hope the aliens lay down some biotech laws before things get too far out of hand. Another few years, and we'll either be destroying ourselves or someone will show up to save us. Should be interesting!
Yes.
It depends off your target site, but yes it is possible.
- You can replace bone marrow (remove a mutated one that led to cancer, and put another one (given from a relative) that is exempt of the broken gene that lead to the cancer). As you are modifying stem cells (blood cells precursors) the modification is rather permanent. And as the newly produced white blood cells are always re-trained after creation they won't consider your body as foreign so you won't have immune system rejection (graft vs. hosts in this case). And as a bonus, because bone marrow cells have homing capabilities, they're as easy as a blood transfer to inject. But the problem is that, during the time between when you radiated the old marrow to kill the cancer and when the newly injected one has finished recreating white cells, there's a window during which the organism is defenseless against infections.
- Viruses are small things that basically work by injecting their genetic information (DNA or RNA) inside a host cell. Scientist can assemble small virus like things that use the virus shell and thus are able to inject their material, but inside they contain the gene you need to add for the therapy. As far as I've heard there were attempt to use such a system to treat mucoviscidosis (by injecting a gene to help produce working chloride channels). It is administered as a spray. The problems are (beside the high cost of such a method) that the spray only reach the supperficial layer of cells in the bronchus. These are differenciated cells that don't multiply anymore, they only do their work until they die off and fall out. The precursors are deeper and not affected by the therapy. Thus the effects aren't permanent. Plus, after some time the hosts immune system ends up discovering those modified virus and/or infected cells, considers them as foreign and develops antibodies against them. Thus the therapy gets ineffective after some times. Thus the whole idea was scrped and now we mostly use drugs that are cheaper, makes the cells work using the gene they already had before (other ion channels - carbocystein) or directly dilutes the secretions (acetylcystein), and whose effect doesn't diminish with time (thus they are much more effective at reducing the speed of degradations of lungs and buying time before lung transplantation gets necessary).
No. /before/ the brain and the retina gets wired. The colour perception capabilities develops when the nervous fibres grow and connect to different population of receptors.
Transgenic mice = before birth gene modification.
For the mutation to work, it has to happen
You can't 'cure' colour-blindness with gene therapy alone.
Technically speaking, there are virus that can infect retina before birth. But they would be much more difficult and expensive to produce, plus they can have bad side effects, and they are harder to control if they did inject their genes. Also the whole stuff is less ethical for the poor mice. Right now, you modify the mice at the stage of either zygote (1 single cell) or not-yet feconded gamete. You let the zygote do a couple of division, you get one of the dozen cell and check it the gene is still in place. If it is, you implant the stuff in a mother mouse. With the virus way, you have to inject the virus into a mother mouse while she still carries the baby mice (and hope that there won't be too much side effects - inflamation and such - for the mother or the mice she carries), then once the baby mice are born, you have to screen them to see which one carry the new gene (and has them into the eyes. The virus can target several organs, and won't necessarily infect the mice's eyes. I don't know, but maybe removing one of the eyes could be the only solut
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I'd bet most Mac users see the world in CMYK.
That explains a lot of things.
Perhaps, if a human could be genetically altered to have a type of cone in their eyes which received UV light. All known tetrochromats, as discussed in this article, however, have a 4th cone able to receive light somewhere between the red and green frequencies. That allows them to perceive the normal human colourband in much greater detail than I can, but they can't see in UV.
More importantly, they can't see in IR. To me, having heat vision would be way cooler.
Some researchers think human's are "blocked tetrachromats". The fourth group of cones in this case is in the near ultra-violet, not refining green, yellow and red. Further, the lens of a normal human eye absorbs those UV wavelengths so strongly that the UV cones mostly see dark. Only when the lens is removed, as cataract surgery, are the UV cones activated.
I don't know how accepted this theory is, plus current physiology can't fully map the nerves of the retina to the brain.
Ducks are pentachromats. They have 5 different receptors for color. That doesn't mean they see other colors than we do, but it does mean they have better color differentiation. I can think of no other explanation other than ducks evolved from artists.
Maybe we can put them to work testing monitors. Your garden variety graphics card and monitor are already capable of producing more colors (4.28 million or some such) than humans can differentiate (3 to 3.5 million).
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So were these French mice?
I know there's a joke about the three blind mice in all of this but I just can't find it. But irregardless, I can't wait until they get to 16-bit color with those genes!
If the tetrachromatic mutation affects a single dominant gene in the X chromosome, why is it that it is only expressed phenotypically in females? Men have a single X chromosome too -- in fact, we are more adversely affected by inherited traits such as colour-blindness for the precise reason that we only have a single copy (thus a recessive mutation would be more likely to be manifested, since there's no "normal" version of the gene to suppress it).
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
"I can see clearly now, the brain is gone, I can see all obstacles in my way..."
Very sorry
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Jerry must have never realized Tom is grey, I wonder what color he thought he was.
One method that may let discover the tatrachromats may be asking the question:
"how many colours do you think TV set is unable to produce?"
"what colours?"
http://id3as.livejournal.com/
An amazing article about altering mice to see more than two wavelengths and the fact that some women can apparently see four, and some retarded, dork has to make an "I, for one, welcome" joke.
Doesn't that joke ever get old? Some moderator even marked it as funny. For fucks sake people... you all must be a fucking gas at a party.
Is that the same as different colors?
How then can we distinguish between 24 and 16 million colors on a computer?
Were going to take over the world!
That the brain needs to wire the different colors to different regions to percieve colors. That does not need to be the case, as neural nets are very good at distinguishing different signals in the same space. The brain just sees the correlation between the red pwallops and fusitales them into amorpholous sets. So you don't need different regions to proces different sensors.
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This is the laser found in my laser mouse. When I look directly down the beam I see a red dot.
Ob quote, "Do not look directly into laser with remaining good eye."
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If you are in any way involved in designing/choosing color schemes, you may want to have a look at the Eizo L797-U [eizo.com], S2411W [eizo.com] or similar screens that can simulate color blindness.
For everybody who doesn't want to buy a new monitor, try Color Oracle.
My God, it's Full of Source!
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quad-color? meh. Let me know when they find the gene for quad damage.
Looking at the side-bar that shows us what non-genetically modified mice see, does their absence of red vision mean that I could make a better mouse trap just by painting a plain old mousetrap red?
Could synesthaesia include the "feeling" of music? If so, I think more than 1 in 23 people may have synesthaesia to some degree or another. My wife who "likes" music does not seem to experience it like I do and when I talk to her about what I feel when I experience music, it does not seem to reach as deeply into her psyche and it does to me.
This does not seem to be related to musical skills; she can play piano, I can't play a darned thing even though I tried very hard to learn. Yet music (of many types) ignites a very emotional response in me.
can they see Octarine?
My remark about M and L cones activating the same neurons, was that the mouse usually has an SM signal. I assumed that this meant there would be two paths to the brain, and that would encoding a gene for an L cone would create a similar L path to the brain, or if the L signal would be multiplexed on top of the M signal.
Think of it like component cables. Mice have G and B connected, and R disconnected. Does the R signal go through some sort of merger before getting plugged back into G? That was my question.
I just also thought...does this gene therapy connect the R wire to a display which has an R input? I would contend that, if there was a specific cable for R, then the brain would learn to differentiate the signal and "see red".
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