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Human Language Gene Changes How Mice Squeak
archatheist writes "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have engineered a mouse whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for a different (human) version. This is interesting because the gene is implicated in human language, and this has changed how mice squeak. 'In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.' The academic paper was published in Cell."
... with ultrasonic zombie mice.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is how The Secret of Nimh began, isn't it?
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering ?
in a nut shell, i'd support any form of genetic experiementation that does cause undue distress or suffering on an animal. call me a soft lefty, but i just can't stomach unwarranted suffering of animals. i feel worse for them than i do for most humans, because they don't understand what's happening and certainly don't bring it on themselfs.
once i was asked if i supported harvesting organs from animals to save people - I do, but only if it's done in a humane manner and the animals don't suffer. after all if we can't protect animals from cruelty what chance is there we will do the same for our fellow man?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Emotions or not, I'm still eating cows.
A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table,
... er ... I
a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with
large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips.
'Good evening', it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, 'I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body?'
It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters in to a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.
Its gaze was met by looks of startled bewilderment from Arthur and Trillian, a resigned shrug from Ford Prefect and naked hunger from Zaphod Beeblebrox.
'Something off the shoulder perhaps?' suggested the animal, 'Braised in a white wine sauce?'
'Er, your shoulder?' said Arthur in a horrified whisper.
'But naturally my shoulder, sir,' mooed the animal contentedly, 'nobody else's is mine to offer.'
Zaphod leapt to his feet and started prodding and feeling the animal's shoulder appreciatively.
'Or the rump is very good,' murmured the animal. 'I've been exercising it and eating plenty of grain, so there's a lot of good meat there.'
It gave a mellow grunt, gurgled again and started to chew the cud. It swallowed the cud again.
'Or a casselore of me perhaps?' it added.
'You mean this animal actually wants us to eat it?' whispered Trillian to Ford.
'Me?' said Ford, with a glazed look in his eyes, 'I don't mean anything.'
'That's absolutely horrible,' exclaimed Arthur, 'the most revolting thing I've ever heard.'
'What's the problem Earthman?' said Zaphod, now transfering his attention to the animal's enormous rump.
'I just don't want to eat an animal that's standing there inviting me to,' said Arthur, 'It's heartless.'
'Better than eating an animal that doesn't want to be eaten,' said Zaphod.
'That's not the point,' Arthur protested. Then he thought about it
for a moment. 'Alright,' he said, 'maybe it is the point. I don't
care, I'm not going to think about it now. I'll just
think I'll just have a green salad,' he muttered.
'May I urge you to consider my liver?' asked the animal, 'it must be very rich and tender by now, I've been force-feeding myself for months.'
'A green salad,' said Arthur emphatically.
'A green salad?' said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
'Are you going to tell me,' said Arthur, 'that I shouldn't have green salad?'
'Well,' said the animal, 'I know many vegetables that are
very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually
decided to cut through the whoile tangled problem and breed
an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of
saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.'
It managed a very slight bow.
'Glass of water please,' said Arthur.
'Look,' said Zaphod, 'we want to eat, we don't want to make a meal of the issues. Four rare stakes please, and hurry. We haven't eaten in five hundred and sevebty-six thousand million years.'
The animal staggered to its feet. It gave a mellow gurgle. 'A very wise coice, sir, if I may say so. Very good,' it said, 'I'll just nip off and shoot myself.'
He turned and gave a friendly wink to Arthur. 'Don't worry, sir,' he said, 'I'll be very humane.'
It waddled unhurriedly off to the kitchen.
Nah, if we are not careful the monsters could be the scientists and rest of us.
From the link:
> However, there is no evidence the chimeric mice began to contemplate the meaning of life. We need to give such chimeric mice no more or less moral consideration than we already give laboratory mice.
Really? How do they know that - they don't speak mice.
And what about the humans who don't contemplate the meaning of life? Most of us don't contemplate the meaning of life every minute of our lives.
OK say 1% human is still not human enough. At what percentage does a subject become too human to experiment on?
Yes, look at it that way.
And they'd probably do things the other way round too - start adding nonhuman (not necessarily animal) parts to humans.
So maybe you might decide to reject an "upgrade" because you would be no longer be classed as human and thus be no longer eligible for human-only medical insurance or "NHS".
Just because the tech is ready, doesn't mean the laws, systems and societies are ready.
What I wouldn't pay for a mouse that could curse. Or good god a monkey. Give me a cursing monkey and I'll tithe you every paycheck 'til I die.
A marker of language as opposed to verbal signaling is that speech is 'productive'. That is, it evolves. This can be done by compounding -- simplifying multiple elements into a single one. An example of Koko the gorilla doing comes from Penny Patterson's dissertation. Koko took the signs for 'apple' and 'drink' and formed a single compound sign for 'apple juice'. This example has been passed around for years as good evidence Koko was actually using language.
Another example from the same source but not made as public was Koko's compounding 'dirty', 'toilet' and 'stink' into a sign referring to feces. Not terribly surprising in normal use. But she used it in another context. When her intended mate Mike was introduced, Koko didn't care for him at all. One time when Penny was trying to cajole Koko into accepting Mike, she said "Mike is a smart gorilla. I like Mike." Unimpressed, Koko replied "Mike dirty-toilet-stink", ie. 'Mike is shit'.
There's your cursing monkey (actually, ape). You can find it in her dissertation, "Linguistic Capabilities of a Lowland Gorilla", Stanford, 1979. Or you can call Koko's humans at 1-800-ME-GO-APE (634-6273), I dirty-toilet-stink you not. If you're serious about your paycheck to even the slightest degree, feel free to visit koko.org and donate to her Conservation Education Project: Koko is teaching sign language in Cameroon, to deaf children as well as to hearing children interested in becoming sign language interpreters. If anyone still doubts Koko's linguistic abilities in light of this fact, I would doubt their linguistic comprehension more than I would Koko's.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Today's biology is finite component analysis done at a massive scale.. Figuring out how a machine as big as a person works is going to take millennium
Maybe not, high-throughput molecular biology is getting better all the time.
-With the genome sequenced we have a rough idea of how many genes there are and can find homologies between genes, so you can begin clustering genes by presumed function.
-With mutagenesis screens, you can sometimes identify most of the genes involved in a given process.
-High-throughput protein interaction studies can identify complexes, grouping proteins into functional groups.
-There's an attempt to make a knockout mouse for every gene in their genome.
None of those will give you the full story for any one gene, nor will any give you good stories for most of the genes by themselves. But used together, we can have a rough idea of what genes do what, and can take a closer look at what we need to. This gene, FOXP2 for example, was not chosen at random.
And that's just with technology I've heard of that exists now. I don't know much about genomics, and we certainly are going to continue to invent ways to get research done faster. I think the human genome project came in under budget and ahead of schedule largely due to technology that was advanced as the project was underway. It's too early to make such long forecasts.
And what about the humans who don't contemplate the meaning of life? Most of us don't contemplate the meaning of life every minute of our lives.
We do actually. Look, there's no easy way to tell you this but it's time you knew; you're one of the mice.