Mice

PHILADELPHIA -- Scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute, the laboratory famous for cloning Dolly the sheep, have come out with this new finding just in time for the Thanksgiving weekend: We're more like turkeys than previously believed.The similarity -- identified specifically in chickens but present in turkeys and all other birds -- is in the way that genes are arranged on the chromosomes."We find that the human is more like the chicken than the human is like the mouse," said lead researcher David Burt, whose paper appeared in yesterday's issue of the journal Nature.

Mutant mice that ignore their own infants, allowing them to die from neglect, provide new evidence that in mammals the very essence of mothering -- the ability to nurture the young -- has an important genetic component.The inattentive mother mice, described in today's issue of the journal Cell, were bred by researchers at the Harvard Medical School to lack a gene known as fosB.The researchers did not set out to study nurturing; rather, they were curious about fosB, because it is one of many "immediate early genes," which are thought to be crucial players in learning, memory and other types of behavioral change.

Increasing the activity of a single gene turns a mere rodent into Mighty Mouse, according to a new study. California scientists have genetically engineered an animal that has more muscle, less fat and more physical endurance than its littermates - it runs twice as far as expected. "We were quite surprised," said Ronald M. Evans, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "Most people think that increased endurance comes from training. But we've been able to re-create this entire exercise network by increasing the activity of a single protein."

There is one daring thing about ABC's new animated political series, "Capitol Critters": the network's decision to launch it at 8:30 tonight (WJZ-TV, Channel 13) as a lead-in to the President's State of the Union message.But that's the end of daring.As a cartoon, the new Steven Bochco and Hanna-Barbera series about mice living in the basement of the White House is potentially rich material cheapened into knockabout yuks. As politics, the series is so safe and middle-of-the-road that it literally has no point of view.

I GOT INTO IT with a mouse a few days ago, and it ended ugly, the way these things always do.If you're going to get into it with a mouse, my advice is to keep it simple.Forget those do-gooder traps where you catch the mouse alive and release him in the back yard.Let me tell you something, Jack: That back yard better be in Wyoming. Because if you release him in your own back yard, he'll be back in your house before you are.And this time he'll be the tour guide for a bunch of his buddies.Nah, here's what you do. Buy yourself an old-fashioned mousetrap.

The senior medical director for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation said yesterday that he is concerned about Martek Biosciences Corp.'s announcement that a nutritional supplement made by the Columbia-based company had a beneficial effect on mice genetically altered to mimic symptoms of the disease.But the foundation is intrigued by the findings and plans to support a follow-up study to gather information about what role the nutritional supplement might have in treating the inherited, deadly disease that affects more than 30,000 Americans.

WASHINGTON - An international team of scientists announced yesterday that it has completed the genetic map of the mouse, an animal revered among researchers as much as it's reviled by homeowners around the world. The map, which took more than 200 scientists in six countries three years to make, is being heralded by some scientists as an achievement as important as the decoding of the human genome. The availability of both maps is likely to accelerate the search for treatments for cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia, AIDS and other human ailments.

IF YOU USE your computer for more than an hour a day, you'll find that little problems get very annoying very quickly. And nothing is more annoying than a mouse that doesn't work.Mine started acting up a couple of weeks ago -- skipping a bit and landing the cursor just east or west of where I wanted it to go. I ignored the problem at first, but gradually it got to the point where I was spending too much time pawing at the little gadget and not enough time working at whatever I was doing.This is an affliction that every mouse suffers over time.

The tiny creature's beady black eyes lock briefly with Chip Hawkins' baby blues as the animal quivers on Hawkins' knuckles, its stubby nose twitching, its clawlike toes digging into his disposable gloves. Is there a flicker of mutual understanding here? Hawkins and the mouse carry human genes for cystic fibrosis, the man through nature, the mouse by design. And both are part of the hunt for a cure. Hawkins, a lab technician in the Transgenic Mouse Facility at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, helps breed genetically altered mice like the one in his hand.

Baltimore County employees, who said they were getting sick from the air in a Towson high-rise where they previously worked, have moved into a refurbished $19 million office building that has a problem of its own: mice. Lots of mice. The infestation is at the three-story, 161,200-square-foot Drumcastle Center at 6401 York Road in the Anneslie area, not far from the Baltimore city line. About 900 county and state workers moved into the building in January after years of health complaints in their former building, the Investment Building in downtown Towson.