A team of US scientists has produced a strain of genetically altered mice that learn more quickly and have better memories than ordinary mice. The researchers, based at Northwestern University, Illinois, bred the smart mice by altering a gene that increases the level of a particular protein in the developing brain. Their findings were published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The work provides the first good evidence that the protein, called GAP-43, actually regulates learning, says team leader Aryeh Routtenberg. GAP-43 appears to be important in early brain development, when the brain cells are deciding where and how to grow. The mice with increased levels of GAP-43 were better at finding food in a maze and remembering its location later.
Routtenberg said he would oppose any attempts to create a designer drug for people who wanted to be smarter, or wanted their children to have an advantage in school. 'You get into ethical questions' he said. 'But I think that we are moving ever closer to finding an agent that will facilitate when we are learning'. He thinks that legitimate uses of such a treatment would include Alzheimer's disease, some forms of mental retardation and perhaps age-related memory loss.
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