Scientists are claiming experimental confirmation that genetically modified mice are able to distinguish the color red - an ability that mice do not naturally exhibit.
In the study, the researchers used genetic engineering to introduce a snippet of DNA into the mouse genome that encodes instructions for how to synthesize the red wavelength sensitive cone receptor photopigment.
They tested to determine if the genetically altered mice could discriminate between two different colored lights.
These two spectra illustrate researchers' best guess as to how mice — normal mice and those that have been genetically modified to express long-wavelength-sensitive cone cells — perceive light of different wavelengths.
It took the genetically altered mice 10,000 trials to learn the distinction, but once they did, they chose the correct panel 80 percent of the time. Normal mice, in contrast, chose correctly only one third of the time, the expected score if they were guessing randomly among the three panels.
The findings testify to the remarkable flexibility of the mammalian brain, since the mice learned to distinguish colors that their brains had never evolved to "see".
For the complete MSNBC report:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17749226/
For more details from Scientific American:
http://scientificamerican.com/articl...0&chanId=sa017
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