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May 18, 2023

Scientists create super-intelligent mice, discover they’re also very laid-back

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

Year 2015 face_with_colon_three


The genetically modified super-smart mice also proved to suffer less from anxiety, the scientists found.

For all that science has decoded the human genome, we don’t actually know what most of our DNA does, or even what a great many of our genes do. One way to elucidate what a gene does is to change it (mutate it) and see what happens.

This team from Britain and Canada found that mutating a single gene to block the phosphodiesterase-4B (PDE4B) enzyme, which is found in many organs including the brain, made mice cleverer and at the same time less fearful.

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