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Science

Genetically Engineered Big-brained Mice 89

Posted by michael 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."
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Genetically Engineered Big-brained Mice

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  • Huzzah! Bring in the Data Dogs! Ein* rocked.

    I wouldn't mind a smarter dog...
    *From Cowboy Bebop

  • Reminds me of... (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by n-baxley ( 103975 )
    someone [frogspace.net] else [geocities.com]

  • Why were they killed? (Score:3, Funny)

    by TRACK-YOUR-POSITION ( 553878 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @07:47AM (#3915796)
    from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth

    Um, why did they do that? Did the scientists just give the mice an X-ray and say "OMG THESE MOUSES ARE SO FREEKIN SMART EWWWWWWW I DONT WANT SMARTY-SMART MICE SQUISH IT SQUISH IT SQUISH IT!!!!!!!!!!!" and then they all stood on top of lab chairs waiting for their spouses to squish the brainy mice, (but of course they had to settle for the building custodian)?

    Look, I'm just guessing, okay?

    • Re:Why were they killed? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Prof_Dagoski ( 142697 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:25AM (#3916366) Homepage

      That's what's so frustrating about medical imaging technology. It's advanced enough to show what the brain looks like in the skull while the organism is still living, but you don't have a real good way of looking at the very fine structure without dissecting the brain. But, the things that's important to these researchers is what's happening at the cellular level. They want to know how the cells are qualitatively and quantitaively different. For that kind of analysis, they need cells, and a whole lot of 'em to get batches of cell stuff they can measure. My wife does this kind of work and it's amazing what they have to do in order to measure some of these chemicals and cell components.

      • SO are you saying they were all killed to squish cell samples out of their skulls? Couldn't they just get little bits out and let them live. After all lots of people get by with half a frontal lobe...

        Does anyone know why they were killed? Was the experiment planned to work out that way? Even if so, you think they could be a bit more flexible and at least IQ test some of the mice.

        • They learn a lot by freezing the brains and putting super-thin slices on slides and examining them with microscopes. There are a lot of things that can be seen that way that you really can't see any other way. Even so, if I was on that project I would've been against killing ALL of them. I'd really like to see if there are any behavioral differences.
    • -- why did they do that?

      My Guess -- Overheard at ACME Labs:
      B: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
      P: Yes Brain, but where will we find rubber pants our size?
      B: No Pinky, If I disguise myself as a claymation construction worker, we can create our own internationally syndicated children's TV show. We'll become hugely popular and all the kids will worship us. Thence, we will taKe OvER tHE WORLD!
      P: Naaaaaaarf! Poit! Brilliant!....No wait, um.....One Thing Brain. Where are we going to find little ballet slippers for all the camera men?

    • Re:Why were they killed? (Score:4, Informative)

      by margaret ( 79092 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @02:08PM (#3918499)
      Because imaging can't tell you things like:
      Is the beta-catenin really being overexpressed ?
      By how much?
      In which neurons?
      Has the expression of other proteins been altered too?

      To answer these kinds of questions, you need to stain thin slices of the brains or grind up the brains.

      -margaret

    • > from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth

      > Um, why did they do that?

      They caught them trying to take over the world.

    • "from MSNBC: IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth"

      After taking a look around Sciene Magazine's Website [sciencemag.org], I found a quote on their Science Now which is worded a little bit differently:

      "The mice died soon after birth, so the researchers do not know how the bigger brains would affect their behavior"

      This seems to suggest that the mice weren't euthanized -- instead, the modification itself was lethal. However, I couldn't find any confirmation of this in the text of the paper itself (Also on Science's website, requires subscription, though). The gene studied here, B-catenin, is expressed in numerous tissues throughout the developmental process, so I'd be a little surprised if such a major change yielded a viable organism.

  • Just imagine... (Score:3, Funny)

    by zenyu ( 248067 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @07:58AM (#3915841)

    If they gave this to a dolphin or a whale which already have larger brains than us, but presumably don't have our overabundance of the magic protein.

    Or our nearest neighbors like chimps and gorillas... Though I think it would be more interesting to give it exclusively to Bonobos, they'd probably write some interesting erotica ;)
    • Someday we will regret doing all of these experimints...

      *Flashbacks of planet of the apes*
    • Or our nearest neighbors like chimps and gorillas...

      Or George W. Bush ...

  • ...to pull up another reference, reminds me a lot of the Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH [amazon.com]. Great book (at least it was when I was like 12 or so).

    • Or Baron von Wau-Wau in Spider Robinson's "Callahan" stories
    • Or "The Amazing Maurice And His Educated Rodents" by Terry Pratchett. I'm reading it now. Pratchett's rats get big brains by eating from the garbage pile behind the Unseen University, but, in typical Pratchett fashion, they not only get intelligence, but also get ethics and religion in the bargain.

      Note that this isn't entirely off-topic. Although the book is a fantasy marketed toward teens and pre-teens, it actually addresses many issues in AI, animal rights, ethics, religion and bioengineering. Of course, if you've read other Discworld novels, you would know that already...

  • Algernon, perhaps?

    In other news...
    A pastry factory custodian's brain was doubled in size by the insertion of an extra gene. He's reported to be in good spirits, and looks forward to a full life of intelligence and happiness.
    • EnVisiCrypt is refering to a book with the title "Flowers for Algernon". The book deals about a mentally retarded man that is made extremely smart by operating him. The scientists tested the operation on a mouse called "Algernon" and after some time Algernon goes crazy and the whole expermiment is a failure. Read the book!
    • You're thinking of "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes. It's a short story written in 1959 that won a Hugo Award. Later expanded into a novel which was made into a movie, "Charly."

      I don't have the links but the IMDB probably lists it. Good book, but I thought the movie was so-so.

  • Manic Mice (Score:4, Funny)

    by ThereIsNoSporkNeo ( 587688 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @08:41AM (#3916087)
    They said that the mice were "Killed soon after birth"... what they didn't say is that they were killed after leading a bloody rebellion that culminated in a tense showdown in the lab, with one of the engineered mice holding a poisoned needle to one of the researcher's throats.

    Luckily they were able to calm down the miscreant with a piece of cheese, and lured him far enough away from the researcher to turn him into a bloody splot on the (otherwise spotlessly clean linolium) floor.

    Back to you Bob.
  • The Lysenko Maze - David Grinnell - F&SF Jul '54

    A short story about hyperintelligent mice. OK, they were bred --- we didn't have DNA manipulation in '54, and for that matter the discovery of DNA was only in the near-future.

    The story's worth reading all the way through at least once.
    • Lysenko considered genetics anti-soviet and "imperialist whore". Even if DNA existed back then it wouldn't have had a chance with that monster, who held back the Soviet (and world) biology for years...

  • This only got the section page (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This article, about a single gene that could revolutionize civilization, only got on the science section page. While an article about Perl 5.8.0 got FP. I don't think another slightly different version of Perl will change civilization as we know it.

    EDITORS: WHY ISN'T THIS FP!

    Maybe you should double-check with other editors to make sure stories are where they belong.
    • Maybe? Maybe? The editors should do a lot of things they aren't doing, but this is Slashdot so they're not interested in runing a quality news site, they're just interested in, in, in -- hell, I can't tell what the fuck they're interested in. Video games, better graphics cards for those video games, Linux, and Microsoft bashing, apparantly. Certainly not editing or any other activity that might require thought. I'm not even sure why they're called editors -- ever notice that they don't edit the stories they post?

    • I agree with you on the potential impact. But I submitted it as a Science section story, and that's where they put it.

  • Rescaled images (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:09AM (#3916267)
    In the MSNBC article, they rescaled the brain images to be about the same size - going to the original article (subscription req'd) [sciencemag.org], the brains overexpressing ß-catenin [tuebingen.mpg.de] 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.

  • please not now (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:24AM (#3916361) Journal
    Oh great!

    First it was H1B's from India, Pakistan, and China. Now we have to compete with smart mice also.

    Shudduv been a dentist like Mom warned.
    • Oh great!

      First it was H1B's from India, Pakistan, and China. Now we have to compete with smart mice also.

      Shudduv been a dentist like Mom warned.

      Sounds like someone doesn't like having his cheese [amazon.com] moved.

  • eh, unlikely to be smarter (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:32AM (#3916431)
    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!
    • Evolution isn't flawless, or biased toward intelligence. Big brains have worked well for us, so far, but it's not a given that it is the ultimate survival solution.

      It could be that evolution DID "create" brainy mice at one point, but that the metabolic cost outweighed the advantages.

      Or: The brains might have given an advantage, but the mice didn't live long enough for it to make a difference.
      • Or: The larger brains might have given them an advantage, but other mutations caused them to evolve into something other than mice. Perhaps rats are desended from mice that got the big-brain gene along with some other non-mouse genes (maybe the larger brain didn't work without a larger skull to put it in, and in getting that they also got an overall larger body to go with it).

    • Remember, for evolution, you have to have a mutation that is different from the norm, and the chances to have a mutation are insanely high. So the chances of having this specific gene mutate are insanely * insanely high...hehe

      Alse, if this gene were not at all dominant, then it would probably not be included in the offspring.
  • These must be those vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional mice that are actually experimenting on US!

    Head for the hills, the Vorgons are coming!!

  • of mice and men (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by g4dget ( 579145 )
    What have men got to do with anything?
    • Come on, if you don't get it, why waste your moderation points on it? Any geek worth his salt should know that that refers to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galazy.
  • Let's not forget about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH! [google.com]

    The movie even has curse words, deaths, and a psychedelic sequence of rats undergoing DNA mutation. Gotta love Don Bluth back when he was good.

  • Looks like Spielberg's 'Pinky and the brain' was a prediction and not simply a cartoon - doh. Maybe the heading should have been

    Pinky: "Gee Brain, what are we going to do tonight?"
    Brain: "what we do every night - try to take over the world!"
  • IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth

    ...they were ridiculed for their thick eyeglasses and pocket protectors, and bullied to death by their dumber peers.

  • Arthur always was a little confused about the mice (Score:4, Funny)

    by schmaltz ( 70977 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:36AM (#3916890)
    "Earthman, the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was built, and we've got to build another one."

    Only one word registered with Arthur.

    "Mice?" he said.

    "Indeed Earthman."

    "Look, sorry - are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit coms?"

    Slartibartfast coughed politely.

    "Earthman," he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak. These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan- dimensional beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front."

    The old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued.

    "They've been experimenting on you I'm afraid."

    Arthur thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared.

    "Ah no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No, look you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them. They were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff. So what happened was that the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behaviour we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own ..."

    Arthur's voice tailed off.

    "Such subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it."

    "What?" said Arthur.

    "How better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking. Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese, unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis, - if it's finely calculated the cumulative effect is enormous."

    He paused for effect.

    "You see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an organic computer running a ten-million-year research programme ...

    "Let me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time."

    "Time," said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my problems."
  • They're Pinky and the Brain
    Pinky and the Brain:
    One is a genuis,
    The other's insane;
    They'll overthrow the earth,
    They'll rule with all their worth;
    They're Pinky,
    They're Pinky and the Brain
    Brain Brain Brain Brain
    Dun dun.

    LOL. Ok, but seriously, this is interesting. More interesting than seeing if mice can play chess or learn to read, is if this same technique can be applied on humans pre-birth, and if genetic engineering via virus-vectors could be used to apply it to the already-living (not just the unborn).
  • While Sirius is a great book, I would have thought that the Rats of NIMH would have been the obvious reference .

    In my opinion, the book is vastly supirior to the movie of the same name.

    Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh [kokogiak.com]

  • "IT IS NOT yet clear whether the mice are smarter -- they were all killed soon after birth when they started unlocking their cages and yelling obscenities at the scientists -- but the scientists..."
  • Is it just me, or did the scientists spend too much time creating the fractals that they pawned off as so called 'mri cross-sections'? =P

  • Huh, and I always thought it was exposure to Chemical X that caused brains to double in size.

    Oh well, at least this way is safer. The Chemical X route always seems to produce mad geniuses intent on taking over Townsville (when applied to primates, at any rate).

  • Mouse brains normally have a smooth surface. Human brains are all wrinkled and folded, because they are squashed into the skull.

    Squashed... is that a medical term? (:
  • Imagine a beowulf cluster or these!
  • ...'The Secret of NIMH? Remember your movie history, then go back and reread this article...and then consider whether or not you really want to bulldoze that rosebush in your front yard...
  • Put one of these in the mouse cage:

    LED Binary Clock
    Check out this desktop binary timepiece. After a few minutes, you'll be able to read it right away while your friends and family stare in awe at your massive craniums...

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