What can we learn from the really weird animals?
Like latterday Dr Dolittles, life scientists seem to want to talk to the animals, by making animals that talk. Or at least, animals that glow in the dark.
Life science has acquired an odd public reputation – forever synonymous with importing rabbits and mice on ferries for kicks. But the life scientists are certainly getting up to some pretty intriguing experiments. Most experiments are, when all is said and done, tedious as all hell. But these are experiments. It’s like they’re on E, but with the ‘E’ standing for ‘Experiment’. Or ‘Extreme Shit Being Done With Animals’.
Scientists in the Netherlands have injected cows with the protein lactoferrin derived from humans. Found in breast milk and tears, this little bit of Homo sapiens would allegedly help boost cows’ immune systems. (Cows swimming with human tears? It’s already happened.) Goats on a farm run by Utah State University have been genetically modified with spider genes so they produce silk in their milk. You think it’s milk, but no … it’s silk! Or, at least, silky milk (milky silk?). Then there is ANDi, the world’s first transgenic monkey (‘transgenic’ means combining genes).
ANDi, whose name contains ‘DNA’ backwards, was born following experiments conducted by researchers at the Oregon Health and Science University. ANDi was no common or garden transgenic monkey: he was a transgenic monkey with some jellyfish DNA spliced into him. That is, jellyfish DNA was cut and pasted – literally – into monkey DNA. If you hold a torch up to ANDi, he glows a bit green.
So on some levels these animal experiments seem quite mind-bending, and on others a bit silly. In choosing to create a chimerical mythic creature anew the scientists eschewed classical models like the Chimera itself – lion, goat and snake – in favour of a slightly fluorescent monkey. (Of course, slightly fluorescent monkeys could easily lead on to slightly fluorescent human beings: not just useful for finding people in the dark, but also fun in the bedchamber.)
What the scientists love most, though, is fucking up mice. Everyone remembers the most famous transgenic mouse, the so-called Vacanti mouse (named after its inventor, the MIT professor Charles Vacanti), burdened with what appeared to be a ruddy great human ear on its back. This mouse had a ruddy great ear on its back, but couldn’t even hear through it. So that’s odd. In a full-page New York Times ad one anti-testing group labelled this striking image ‘an actual photo of a genetically engineered mouse with a human ear on its back’ – which was actually incorrect. The ‘ear’ was just cartilage grown into the shape of a human ear, although you can sort of see how this misapprehension might have taken hold, what with it looking like a mouse with an ear on its fucking back.
Anyway, transgenic mice are everywhere. In 2007, biologists in Cleveland conjured up a so-called ‘supermouse’ that could run six kilometres without pausing for breath or sustenance. That’s one hell of a useful mouse. It could carry very small packages or messages on paper. Hang on, there’s e-mail for that. It’s useful. It’ll come to me …
So-called ‘smart mice’ have been engineered at Princeton. Altered with an extra gene that boosts the neurotransmitter NMDA (N.B., not MDMA – that would be a different experiment entirely), the mice get a brainpower boost and outperform ordinary mice in various mouse-cleverness tests. Sadly, they also scare more easily. Meanwhile, Larry Young at Emory University transferred a gene from the monogamous prairie vole into the hitherto promiscuous lab mouse – and created monogamous mice. So there’s a lot of stuff going on with mice. Less shagging around, in one instance.
But this is not just mutants for mutants’ sake (not always). Some of these experiments on animals are showing humanity a brave new dawn in the here and now. Geneticists also based in Cleveland are producing transgenic mosquitoes that do not carry malaria, which in Cayman Island trials have started squeezing out mosquitoes that do. So that’s good, because malaria is bad.
Then there’s using animals to develop stuff useful for humans in a more direct way – by means of xenotransplantation: the breeding of animals for harvesting organs to transplant into humans. Renowned fertility expert and television star Lord Robert Winston is working on breeding GM pigs whose hearts can be transplanted into humans.
The heart of a pig is about the same size as the heart of a man. If liberally covered in human protein, it may be accepted by the human body. And, okay, it sounds wrong – putting the heart of a pig into a man. But is it wrong? Clearly it is. But is it? It’s the heart of a pig. But they’re putting it into a man. Is that wrong? There are risks for safety in all of this (no, really) – for example, of contracting animal viruses. Plus it might make you go off sausages, which just isn’t worth the risk. (Maybe this is why Robert Winston is so twinkly eyed on the telly: he has just been bending nature on the sly.)
Even the supermice could have human applications. The Cleveland mice lived longer, ate more without getting fat and had more sex; some humans might also want to live longer, eat more without getting fat and have more sex. Could not supermice lead to genetically enhanced supermen? The researchers said that was not the aim of the project, before pointing out that humans do also possess this highly active gene for an enzyme called phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK). ‘But this is not something that you’d do to a human,’ said Professor Richard Hanson of Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University.
He has not even thought about it. No way. Not even once. Going down in history as the creator of a new breed of superbeings has never even begun to occur to him. ‘It’s completely wrong,’ he added.
(He can’t stop thinking about it.)
Anyway, one group of scientists is making mice monogamous, while another is making them randy. And that is what experimenting on animals is all about.
We want to help you overcome your genes
Many are calling the twenty-first century the century of biology. Mainly it’s the biologists calling it that. But they do have a point. The century began with a bang, biologically speaking, with the rough completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP) – ‘biology’s Apollo landing’ – in 2000. Large-scale messing with your actual humans at a genetic level came one huge step closer with the mapping of the human genome (all the genetic info in a person), aka the Road Atlas of Man.
It was a hell of a thing. Even just reading out the entire code (some 3 billion DNA base pairs, or 23,000 genes) would take about twelve years – so don’t do that. This achievement was announced with great fanfare by then US-president Bill Clinton, a fervent supporter of the efforts – and he had more to fear from genetics than most, having totalled his presidency by spilling some seed on an intern’s dress. ‘We are learning the language in which God created Life,’ he said. (About the HGP, not while he was getting off with Monica Lewinsky.) (Although maybe then too.)
So what have we learnt? We already know that cauliflowers contain more genes than humans. So having lots of genes isn’t everything; no one is claiming cauliflowers have anything approaching human consciousness (there is nothing cruel about cauliflower cheese). But mainly what we have learnt is that we still have much to learn. We have mapped the human genome, but we don’t know how most of it works. We are trying to find the secrets written in the DNA. It’s like runes, man.
The HGP cost $3bn, which is a lot of money. But the costs are rapidly falling for having your own genetic code sequenced (it currently costs over £2,000). So you are now able to have a much better idea of how you will die (cancer, Hodgkinson’s, Parkinson’s …). So that’s nice. But then, there is also the prospect of targeted medicine. As the price of mapping genes comes down, you could get drugs optimised for your particularities (people respond to drugs differently); so-called pharmacogenetics. You could even treat an illness before you get it. Treating diseases you don’t yet have – it’s the future.
Mapping