Word: tsien
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...will be a while before such dangers arise, though, and--as cancer researchers have discovered all too often--it isn't even certain that what works in mice will work in people. Tsien and his colleagues believe it's not unreasonable to think it will. "The NMDA receptor in humans is nearly identical to the receptor in mice, rats, cats and other animals," he says. "We believe it's highly likely that it plays a similar role in humans...
...Even so, Tsien has no plan to try tinkering with human genes--nor could he under current ethical guidelines. Drugs that can boost the action of the NR2B molecule, however, are not only ethical but already being contemplated. "Princeton has applied for a use patent for this gene," says Tsien, acknowledging his contacts with drugmakers, "although we wouldn't try to patent the gene itself...
There remains the nagging question of what it means precisely to say that Tsien & Co. have created a smarter mouse. "What is it that is being tested?" asks Gerald Fischbach, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. "That's the problem with mouse behavior. It's not clear that we're talking about the same thing when we talk about learning in a rodent and learning in a human...
...Tsien concedes that using the emotive word intelligence in the paper was sure to generate controversy. "We really don't mean to suggest," he explains, "that human intelligence is the same as animal intelligence. But I would argue that problem solving is clearly part of intelligence, and learning and memory are crucial to problem solving. And these mice are better learners, with better memories, than other mice...
...Tsien doesn't claim that he and his colleagues have found the unique genetic key to intelligence or even to memory. "It's likely that brain plasticity involves many molecules," he says. "This is just one of them." On the other hand, he asserts--and his critics would not disagree--that "intelligence does arise out of biology, at least in part." How much remains the great question. Whatever the answer, little Doogie surely represents an important step in unraveling what role our genes play in constructing not just memory but all the other attributes of the human mind. And clearly...