AR-News: Stupid Mouse Experiments

[Adam Weissman, Wetlands Preserve]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Parents used to blame Grandpa for that 
annoying cowlick that refused to be tamed by brush or lotion, but 
scientists now say a single gene could be to blame.

Of course, Grandpa may have passed along the gene, called Frizzled6, 
the researchers write in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences.

But it must be important, as it also affects the development of hair 
whorls in mice and is found in creatures as primitive as fruit flies, 
Jeremy Nathans and fellow geneticists at Johns Hopkins University in 
Baltimore found.

It may even affect the brain, they said.

To study the gene's importance, Nathan's team bred genetically 
engineered mice that lacked Frizzled6 entirely and also created mice 
that had various active versions of the gene.

Mice that lacked the gene were normal and healthy but showed some 
unusual hair patterns such as whorls of hair on their hind feet or 
the back of their heads.

The researchers noted that a team reported in the journal Genetics 
last year that they had found a link between hair whorls and whether 
people are left- or right-handed.

This suggested "the possibility that the same system that patterns 
hair may also play a role in left-right asymmetry in the brain," they 
concluded.



Reuters
May 24 2004 7:09PM

-- 
Hypocrisy: opposing affirmative action while getting to be a Yale 
grad, a governor, and a  president on Daddy's name, connections, and 
influence.

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