Turning off gene makes mice smarter:
Bibb and colleagues used genetic engineering techniques to breed mice that could be manipulated to switch off Cdk5, a gene that controls production of a brain enzyme linked to diseases marked by the death of neurons in the brain, such as Alzheimer’s.“Any time we’re losing neurons, Cdk5 may be contributing to that process. That has made it an area of great interest,” Bibb said in a telephone interview.
“We have shown that we can turn off a gene in an adult animal. That has never been done before,” he added. When they had tried to breed mice that completely lacked the gene, the pups died at birth.
Bibb said they put the mice though a series of tests and found the altered mice did better than normal mice.
[...]
Bibb said his work was inspired by the 1999 discovery of “Doogie” mice, a smarter breed of mice developed at Princeton University that were named after the TV program “Doogie Houser,” a show that featured a child prodigy.Those mice were bred by manipulating NR2B, a gene that also plays a role in associative memory.
“It turns out Cdk5 was controlling the regulation of NR2B,” Bibb said.
(Hat tip to Mrs. Frisby. Just kidding.)