Singing mice

Get a group of mice, tailor their genomes for increased rate of mutation, selectively breed for novel traits and let go. It's evolution writ fast in an artificial environment, and it's what Japanese biologists at the University of Osaka did in a nice bit of open-ended research.

Some of the mice ended up with longer limbs, odd tails, but they've had at least one surprising result. One sub-population of the mice can now sing - video here.

Aside from the core appeal of the idea of a mouse that sings (or chirps, as the case may be), these mice might help further our knowledge of how structured sounds (eg. birdsong), language and even the capacity for speech can evolve, especially in terms of the genes involved.

The researchers are quoted as claiming that the discovery may lead to discoveries on how human speech developed, but this seems just a tad too far-fetched for me. Mice and humans may be just too distant, phylogenetically speaking, for there to be any guarantee of a connection between the genes responsible for human speech and these mice singing.

The mice were genetically modified so that they were prone to DNA replication errors, improving the probability of mutations arising, some of which would then lead to interesting, novel traits. When the researchers identified novel traits, they would selectively breed the mice to carry the traits forward. It is a matter of semantics whether this deserves to be called accelerated evolution, since some would argue that natural selection must be involved for the term 'evolution' to be appropriate, and there is only artificial selection at work here.

In this case however, I'm happy with using the term accelerated evolution to quickly convey what was done, even though many writers have misused the idea of accelerated evolution to refer to something that happens to individuals (i.e. "he's evolving"), rather than populations over generations.

It is also intriguing to think of what applications this technique might have in creating novel traits in future. Who knows what kinds of traits could be imbued in future engineered pets or lifestock animals?

The lead scientist on the project: "I know it's a long shot and people would say it's 'too absurd'... but I'm doing this with hopes of making a Mickey Mouse some day."