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Mighty Mouse
Gene therapy may be a distant dream for humans, but for rodents the future is now. By adding and subtracting DNA, researchers have already bred lab animals that can gorge on fatty foods and stay thin. Others build up muscle without lifting a paw. Still others boast unparalleled powers of recovery or regrow lost cartilage. But what if scientists combined all their improvements in a single supermouse? Our ripped little rodent would look something like this.
Brains: Princeton's genetically engineered test subject, Doogie, passes lab-rat SATs in a fraction of the normal time. The boost comes from extra NR2B genes, which help the brain associate one event with another.
Bottomless pit: James Ntambi at the University of Wisconsin-Madison produced modified mice that can eat a rich, high-fat diet without gaining weight or contracting diabetes. The lean machines lack the SCD1 gene, which fosters fat storage for long winters.
Staying power: Amped with the gene PGC1, rodent muscles absorb oxygen and burn energy more efficiently - without performing any exercise - mimicking the metabolism of a star athlete and resisting fatigue.
Bounce back: At the University of Pennsylvania, Lee Sweeney keeps the gene that controls muscle repair turned on all the time, producing rodents that quickly bounce back from weight-training sessions, and whose muscles don't weaken with age. The mutation can cause heart problems, so Sweeney programmed the gene to turn on only for skeletal muscle.
New flesh: Ellen Heber-Katz's lab animals, also at Penn, heal with remarkable speed. Holes punched in a modified mouse's ear close in a month, rather than last a lifetime. Damaged heart tissue - which supposedly can't regenerate - also shows complete recovery.
Takes a licking, keeps on ticking: Fast food may kill us, but some GM mice have beat heart disease. Harvard's Gökhan S. Hotamisligil removed the protein aP2 from macrophages, scavenger cells that normally produce arterial plaque. Mice without aP2 survived even a morbidly high-fat, high-cholesterol diet. "These mice are untouchable," says Hotamisligil.
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