Imagine a rodent or a mouse, weighing half of normal mice with 90 percent less body fat, but can eat 60 percent more than the ordinary mice! Sounds like a children-fiction character? No, it is a ‘real’ mouse straight from the laboratory, created by some impertinent and crazy scientists.
Yes, the genetic engineers still have lots in store to amaze and amuse the world in the eras to come. The Case Western Reserve University researchers have genetically modified mice that can not only outrun, outlive and out-eat ordinary mice, but also stay fertile well into old age!
Although, the fertility aspect can raise questions about the nuisance its population increase can create, the seven times more active mighty mice’s engineering is a breakthrough in the field of genetic tweak.
The researchers with the genetic tweak have boosted the PEPCK-C enzyme-level in the rodents’ skeletal muscles. In a news release, researcher Richard Hanson, PhD, said,
They are metabolically similar to Lance Armstrong biking up the Pyrenees.
But, whether the brain also changes along with the genetically engineered mice’s hyped-up activity, is yet to be answered.
