Designer Mice Made to Order 382
blackbearnh writes "CNN is reporting about the world of designer mice. No, not the kind you click, the kind that scamper around and eat cheese. An effort is underway to produce mice with each of the 20-25,000 individual mouse genes "knocked out", which could lead to novel new treatments for humans. It turns out that after fully sequencing the mouse genome, the little fellas are almost identical to humans. From the article: 'A mouse with arthritis runs close to $200; two pairs of epileptic mice can cost 10 times that. You want three blind mice? That'll run you about $250. And for your own custom mouse, with the genetic modification of your choosing, expect to pay as much as $100,000.'"
would you? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and Would you like to have fries with it?
Re:would you? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Genetically modified mice
Dear Sir,
I understand that you are in the business of breeding custom-designed mice. I find this quite fascinating, as I require custom animals for my experiments. Do you, by chance, have any specimens which are flexible, clawless and agoraphobic?
Regards,
R. Gere
Re:would you? (Score:2)
Re:would you? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:would you? (Score:2, Funny)
Just order a dozen of the epileptic ones and get some nail clippers.
Re:would you? (Score:5, Funny)
I would! (Score:3, Funny)
But even more importantly, how much for a mouse than learns Visual Basic as its first programming language?
But what I *really* want is a USB mouse that will go where I tell it to and click itself. How much for that?
Re:would you? (Score:2)
Re:would you? (Score:2)
Laser Mouse? (Score:5, Funny)
Mouse human? (Score:2)
Re:Mouse human? (Score:3, Interesting)
Often, the "good" gene combinations that produce a desirable trait have negative reprocusions that far outway the positive ones.
I will attribute him [wikimedia.org] to blind luck on the part of the researcher.
Re:Mouse human? (Score:2)
Indeed, I always thought Brain to be the price paid for creating Pinky.
Re:Mouse human? (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:2, Funny)
Perhaps, then.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:2, Funny)
2) Release into basement.
3) ???
4) Profit (well, not losing money getting some super mouse built to order)!
special mice ... really special (Score:2, Interesting)
What is stopping anyone from making these ecological monsters? Is there some kind of scientific oversight group? Or a set of defined ethical and/or ecological guidelines? Like in Pierre Ouilette's sci-fi novel about plant-animal genetic hybrids that was published in 1993 and whose name excapes me.
Re:special mice ... really special (Score:3, Funny)
With that kind of mouse, you'll have to replace your cat more often. Not to mention walls, fences and your neighbours' Volvo.
Re:special mice ... really special (Score:3, Interesting)
What is stopping anyone from making these ecological monsters?
Probably the fact that you are limited to genes that can be found in the mouse population.
Re:special mice ... really special (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodent [wikipedia.org]
So I bet with some tweaking you could have a beaver sized mouse.
Re:special mice ... really special (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:2)
I've got one mounted to a gyro, only the LED works (clipped all else to make room for a built-in battery so no cord entanglement) and it's fairly well-focused (for an LED,) so a nice bright red dot appears on a wall. (though I say it looks more like an eye than a dot) Disturb the gyro, and boom, instant moving red dot for kitty to play with. Not even a challenge to make.
Re:Hmmm... that's an idea... (Score:2)
Uhmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2)
I assume these mice are for lab tests.
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it playing God or using our natural faculties for the betterment of mankind? Where do you draw the line? Is it ok to make glow-in-the-dark mice, but not mice with 6 legs? What about glow-in-the-dark mice versus glow-in-the-dark E-choli (I did the latter back in high school)? Or glow-in-the-dark people?
I hate mulling over these questions because it's so hard to set a standard to judge them by, but they have to be asked or it gets out of control.
Genetic Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Is inflicting some minor medical condition on a GM mouse any LESS cruel than raising chickens in wire cages, killing and eating them? What about cutting down a tree? Killing a small spider because they make you nervous?
All of the things I mentioned involve people killing things for their own ends. Pretty much every animal in nature, including humans, is willing to kill something weaker or powerless to sustain itself. Humans are the only creature that stop to think about it. (Note that we generally still do it, but just moralize over the decision on occasion.)
It seems to me that it is pretty moot debating about using mice to find cures for diseases, when you might be wearing wool, leather, silk, and eating a ham sandwich. I suppose that you could argue about the degree of suffering that is being infliced upon animals by the various fashions that we use them, but I think I'd much rather be a lab mouse that is bread to have cancer than be a pig in a stockyard. At least I'd have people pumping me full of drugs in an effor to cure me.
Interestingly, because of the central point of my poasting, that it seems a universal law that the more powerful species will prey on weaker species, I have to say that I am *glad* we have not encountered alien lifeforms. There is a good chance that when we meet them, we will size them up as dinner, they will do the same, and someone will get eaten.
Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a heart research lab where we cut the hearts out of the mice and attach them to a working heart machine and pump a blood subsitute through it. Then we test various drugs and load conditions on it. The question is would you like to volunteer so that we test the drugs first on you, or your older family members, instead of the mice so as to spare their lives? Or would you rather be assured that in hundreds of mamalian tests the durgs performed as they are supposed to and the effects are clear and reproducible.
We abide by the rules and anaesthesize the mice carefully, we don't torture them and try to do the best we can to minimize their suffering. Personally I wish we didn't have to do this, I don't like to kill things -- animals or people, but in this case it is worth it to save many human lives.
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many animal rights activits who would disagree with you..
most are young, heathly, and willing to sacrifice the old for their 'moral' quest.
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:4, Funny)
The mice are evil anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
They are cruel, cannibalistic, disgusting animals. They will breed constantly and eat their own children, or perhaps just nibble off half of an ear and leave them to live. Anyone who's kept mice as pets know that having more than one only really works out with two females - a mixed pair will breed a million babies (and then eat them) and with two males one will eventually kill the other over territory.
So, yes, while I think it should be done in as painless of a manner as possible (and to actual justifiable scientific benefit), I think that killing a few of them to save human lives is completely worth it.
Of course, I'm sure anyone looking at humanity from a far enough vantage point would feel the same about us. Doesn't make them wrong, though, from that viewpoint.
Re:The mice are evil anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
But that wasn't the mice's fault. It was mine -- I had human expectations for them. People constantly anthropomorphize animals. They think of them as people and assign them human qualities.. "Dog are compassionate", "Mice are cute". That can go either way. The PETA people assign them all these noble qualities and protect the animals as if they are people. People who work in labs see the mice eat their babies and think how "evil" and "disgusting they are, they almost deserve to be experimented on". The truth is, it is neither, the are not moral, they just do what the instincts tell them to do.
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Say that again when it's your son or daughter whose time it is 'to go'.
I wouldn't like to do it, but I'd wring the little mousie's neck myself if I thought I could extend the life of my children by a handful of years.
It's easy to be an armchair critic, though, isn't it? No risk.
I'll wait for you to show up at my lab tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My previous post, by the way, was sarcastic. I didn't really want his parents to come to my lab so we can give them heart attacks, Naloxone and other stuff. It was just a response to the "let people die -- it will promote the survival of the fittest" comment, so I wanted to see how willing he will be to part with his parents.
How do you describe "quality" of life. Is you "quality" the same as my "quality"? Isn't all life "quality"? Or should we just euthanize a handicapped person cause lord knows, they don't have as much "quality" as the healthy young lawyer across the street?
I am not advicating keeping brain dead people alive on respirators for decades, but I also don't go this "quality" of life argument, sorry.
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Isn't it more cruel or inhumane.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2)
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
Inhumane?! Science being cold, calculating and pitiless? Say it isn't so!
Don't worry about it, when the tests are done, they cure the arthritic mice, put the anti-seizure chip in the epileptic mice, and tiny little bionic eyes in the blind mice. Then they send them to a local farm and release them in a field. Where it's nice and sunny and they can run and laugh and frolic all day long.
But usually they last about 15 minutes before an owl comes by and eviscerates it. A lot of owls hang out by that field, we're not sure why.
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2)
If I had to choose between my daughter dying of diabetes or creating a dozen mice doomed to die of diabetes that the choice is a no-brainer.
And if there was just about anything to do with mice that would give me a healthy 35 year old body for say... 500 years, I'd be for it.
The conflict is unresolved in my brain.
But I guess every day that I engage in -any- kind of luxury instead of helping those poor starving folks in other countries that I'm in engaging in a similar kind of calculus.
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously?
If anything sounds like a recipe for a bored, overpopulated planet, that would be it.
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2)
Learning from mice to save the lives of thousands or millions is worth it in my opinion. Sure it seems crule when you're focused up on it real close... but stop being myopic and think about the larger picture. And, someday when you're sick and a medicine that was found by doing research on mice sav
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's probably inhumane, that's why we don't do it to humans.
Re:Uhmmm.... (Score:2)
We'll have lots of time to dwell on that idea in the future when we're not dying of cancer or suffering from arthritis. And our minds will be clearer into old age when we're not suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It will be a better world and we'll have the mice (and the scientists) to thank.
Obj HHGttG Reference (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Obj HHGttG Reference (Score:2)
(£42, no doubt.)
Leopard Skin (Score:4, Funny)
No more concern about endangered species? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm partially kidding; but partially serious too. If today's california condor isn't well suited in the modern environment; wouldn't it be better to grow better ones more able to survive - rather than forcing the unfortunate few remaining ones to suffer in an environment no longer well suited to them?
Re:No more concern about endangered species? (Score:2, Funny)
No, you fool! If you do that, NOTHING will stop them! We'd be doooooomed!!!
Re:No more concern about endangered species? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, sure. Until we make just one mistake. Then, we have a condor that is very well suited to a suburban environment -- it just eats stray pets!
I do not trust any human, no more how brilliant, to modify life. We don't know how the ecosystem works, and the
Re:No more concern about endangered species? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, part of the cause of the California condor's decline is humans shooting them for sport. So I'll assume you don't include that in your definition of "environment no longer well suited to them."
Part of the problem is that we cannot, yet, grow better animals to survive. This article is talking about crippling mice in specific ways for medical science; eugenics is exactly the opposite technology.
Another issue is the question of species survival. Since we can't gene-sequence an animal complete for later resurrection, especially when that animal's population is under 200 like the California condor's.
The ultimate goal is to preserve species diversity in the wild as much as possible. Human expansion across the planet has had a far more devastating effect on species diversity in every possible environment than natural selection could ever achieve. Too few species and you have a kind of monoculture, filled with a small number of species excellently adapted to parasitizing human society but lousy at doing much of anything else.
Re:No more concern about endangered species? (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously the solution then is to engineer condors with the ability to shoot back. I would have expected nature to come up with that one by now.
Re:No more concern about endangered species? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)
"Knockout mice" are altered to reduce or eliminate a single gene's function, in a simple binary fashion. They are an extremely reductionist technology, used to answer quite reductionist questions of how molecular pathways behave. They are, despite their cost and sophistication (and usefulness), a very crude development.
Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
2. !!!!!!
3. Sell three blind mice for $250
4. Profit!
Wistful thinking (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you pay me the sum of One Million Dollars!!
Re:Wistful thinking (Score:3, Informative)
How much.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How much.... (Score:2)
Ithink you meant this one [blackwolf-images.com].
This is news? Maybe for some of you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then I realized that given the makeup of /. (lots of "hard science" geeks), this could be considered new information to a number of people here. But still, news? I can only assume that when an old topic hits CNN, it suddenly becomes news again.
Re:This is news? Maybe for some of you... (Score:2)
Until then, we'll just continue to learn things as we become aware of them.
Re:This is news? Maybe for some of you... (Score:2)
Re:This is news? Maybe for some of you... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I realized that given the makeup of
heh. If only that were the case. The makeup of slashdot is computer nerds, who generally know very little about science, but think it's "cool". Just look at all the dumb jokes that get posted in every single science story. There aren't two cultures (science and the humanities), but three cultures, science, humanities, and technology. There's a little crossover between the sciences and technologies, with each group thinking they u
Re: Designer Mice Made to Order (Score:5, Funny)
That would really save me a lot of trouble...
I prefer Mozzerella.
Thanks in advance.
Re: Designer Mice Made to Order (Score:2)
Intelligent Design (Score:5, Funny)
Yes it does (Score:2)
We designed them. So, yes, this is ID by pure definition of those two words.
Designer mice? (Score:3, Funny)
$100,000? Worth it! (Score:2)
My faves are the Nude Glowing Mice (Score:5, Interesting)
It's fun to watch the tumors glow red, green, blue, yellow, or a mixture of two or more.
The best part is if you squish the mice a bit but not too much, held flat to a transparent plate, you can see the glow without killing off the mice.
Sadly, this doesn't work with humans, they're too dense (can't see thru them easily), or we'd be further along with methods of locating and killing or at least targetting for excision (surgery) the tumor cells, especially when they have designed receptor tags (an offshoot of HIV research, actually).
Now if we could just design glow-in-the-dark instant tattoos for humans, that would change color if you started to have certain diseases (say HIV or TB or whatever), now that would be super cool.
I'd get mine as a standard-light invisible one, with a green serpeant that had red fangs if I had whatever disease, and maybe a blue afro if I was coming down with something common
Re:Glowing dye for tattoos? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, we do have light-emitting biochemical modifications added to cells which can emit light in the IR and UV bands, or in standard luminescence red/blue/green. Can't see why this couldn't be a tattoo. Originally, it's thought that tattoos were a method of treating illness and providing protection
dammit (Score:2, Funny)
Gives new meaning to "Are you a Man or a Mouse!?" (Score:2, Funny)
They've got it backwards (Score:5, Funny)
Could I get a mouse with Tourette Syndrome? (Score:2, Funny)
Almost Identical? (Score:2)
There a little thing called Chaos Theory [wikipedia.org]. Without getting into details, what it means is, even the slightest change in the initial state of a chaotic system can lead to vastly different results, and the differences will grow as the system evolves.
What's more, complex unpredicable properties will emerge as the system evolves further. Order of a kind may emerge, but only on a general level. Lo
Hacking your own defective mouse (Score:2)
Jackson Lab (Score:3, Informative)
Universities typically do this in-house. (Score:2)
How we treat our animals today is how we will.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would we suddenly have attitudes towards mice that are any different from other animals in our charge? We selectively breed pigs specifically for desired ratios of fat to flesh; breed chickens using hormones that result in an "adult" chicken in a fraction of the conventional time; inject bovine with hormones to stimulate lactation and production; all in an effort that is not in the best interest of the animals, but in the best [immediate] interest of the purveyor.
Looking to the human world, and we turn a blind eye (I apologize for that really mixed up metaphor) from rampant genocide (genocide: a friendly name for killing everyone of a particular genus) in The Sudan because it's in the best interest of Chevron, we never did hold Union Carbide/Dow Chemical to task and provide meaningfully relief to the citizens of Bhopal, but let Texas jail Dianne Wilson for hanging a f*cking protest banner all the while
we don't even raise a whisper about the human genetic mutilation caused by chemical contaminations in Vietnam, Halabja, Toulouse, Venice, Midland - MI, New Plymouth - New Zealand, etc..
Since we clearly do not care about our fellow man and child, but are content to let the corporations dictate the new morality, why the hell should we give a rat's ass about the welfare of a mouse ?
If we accept the theory that we may take liberties with the members of the Mus genus, since we are the superior beings and our benefit outweighs the detriment inflicted, then it is an easy step to rationalize the ill treatment of the third world, and anyone living in Michigan, as justifiable if it in any way benefits the upper middle classes, and that is exactly what we have done.
How we treat our animals today is how we will treat each other tomorrow.
Re:You've got to be kidding me? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You've got to be kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
And no, I didn't RTFA very much.
You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".
Jeez - I am one of those tree hugging animal rights people but your post just screams "pratt" to me. Either that or <tinfoil-hat>agent-provocateur for pharma-com</tinfoil-hat>
.Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:2)
You do realize that they eat dogs, which are much smarter, in about half of the world, don't you?
Or even pigs - they're smarter.
Or goats.
Don't even get me started on force-feeding duck livers to make foie gras (fat liver
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:2)
I claim this act is wrong!
You fool, these other similar acts are going on today and are in my view worse!
Sorry, but that doesn't discredit the initial claim. It does discredit your ability to argue effectively though *ZING*.
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:2)
Holy shit! Mice eat dogs in about half of the world ?! How big are they? or do they work in numbers?
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:2, Insightful)
Consider it a necessary evil.
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is why animals do not have civil rights. They are
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. Its not often I get pissed on
For the truth in advertising, I eat meat. It is wrong to eat meat unless the animal from which it came was slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
There is no rational moral basis for conferring rights on animal
How about it is wrong to inflict unnecessary pain on a living creature? Animals are not simply property anymore than people are simply property. You're right on there being a cutoff and I don't know exactly where the cutoff is, but speaking purely objectively, there is a difference between torturing an animal of higher order and killing some bacteria on a countertop. I think the average idiot can understand that.
Even then, civil rights are an entirely human creation. There is nothing inherent in being human that says we have a right to free speech, but not a right to kill each other. All rights are based in social contract.
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely, because if they enjoy torturing they probably pose a risk to the people around them. The actual animals I could give a crap about, one way or the other.
Rights are one side of the social contract, something that animals are not even capable of comprehending, much less participating in. You don't want to hurt animals? Fine. You want me not to do it? I can accomodate that (within reason), it costs me nothing. But applying "rights" to animals is just plain silly - morality is a human concept.
For the truth in advertising, I eat meat. It is wrong to eat meat unless the animal from which it came was slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. If animals are so endowed with an abundance of rights, what gives you the right to take their lives for your own enjoyment, regardless of how humanely they were killed?
That's the plain truth of it - we kill animals, grind up their flesh, and turn them into nuggets. Every day. By the millions. And then we have all this handwaving about whether a few thousand lab mice enjoy being inbred to the point of being half-blind and generally barely aware of their surroundings (and growing tumors on top of that).
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, when Cthulhu comes to swallow your soul and the only thing you can do is contort your face in terror and scream like a helpless girl, I hope you remember you have no rights.
An animal is no more an "object" than a person is an "object." You lack any sort of scale, or sense of insight. Some animals exhibit more altruistic behaviors than your post does. Moral absolutism like yours is not the only way. I can decry stepping on mice for nothing
Re:I know I'm not the only one by far... (Score:5, Interesting)
It just irks me when people try to claim that it's ok do experiment on animals because of their mental capacity or whatever but refuse to apply the same arguments to our own species. If your perspective is that humans are automagically better/sacred/whatever, that's fine, just don't try to justify it with arguments that make no sense.
Re:Do narcoleptic dogs dream of albino mice? (Score:2)
Funny. Your dog had a similar request for a narcoleptic human.
Re:Sort of sad (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not "just mice", they're medical research mice. It's hard to test a new drug when the test mice don't have the disease the drug is trying to cure.