Science!: Hobbits and Shambhala
Inside: Meet the smartest rat in the world, Hobbie-J.
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Inside: Meet the smartest rat in the world, Hobbie-J.
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I for one welcome our new rodent overlords and hope that they will give us therapy instead of the normal enslaving; just sayingAvsJoe said:Hobbie-J is my new hero! I'm actually happy to hear that there is a genetically-engineered rat that is smarter than me. First stage in a super-rat take-over? Probably, but they couldn't do any worse than we have, right?
Makes sense. It seems like they will be smart enough to know that a happy slave is a more productive slave and less likely to revolt.Andreyblade said:I for one welcome our new rodent overlords and hope that they will give us therapy instead of the normal enslaving; just sayingAvsJoe said:Hobbie-J is my new hero! I'm actually happy to hear that there is a genetically-engineered rat that is smarter than me. First stage in a super-rat take-over? Probably, but they couldn't do any worse than we have, right?
Here hereIzzil said:Now if they prescribed therapy rather than money to winners of court cases, maybe we'd have a lot less stupid cases floating through the justice system.
That's a good question. My assumption is that the researchers didn't inject more genes into the rat, but instead caused the single gene to translate more copies of a particular protein than normal, a protein which enhances the speed of communication between cells. There's more information in the published research: Effect of transgenic overexpression of NR2B on NMDA receptor function and synaptic plasticity in visual cortex. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11640931]Lordtommy said:I'm not so sure about that first article...It would be cool if it's possible. My only problem is that merely putting more copies of a gene into a specimen does not make the body express that gene more. The body has a mechanism called dosage compensation where excess copies of a gene are made into dormant fragments called barr bodies. This happens in females who have two X-chromosomes. MAybe there is a more complicated process they left out of this article though. Pretty cool if it actually worked!