Great, just 'effin great.
Not looking forward to little Hitler rodents enslaving humanity and putting us in the hamster wheels for their own perverse pleasure.
From New Atlas, May 22:
Researchers experimenting with genetically engineered hamsters have found that the biology behind social behavior may be more complex than we thought. The team used CRISPR to block a certain neurochemical signaling pathway, and found that the animals’ social behaviors changed in unexpected ways.
The key to the study is a hormone known as vasopressin. Among other functions, this hormone plays a key role in social behaviors, including pair bonding, sexual motivation, cooperation, social communication, dominance and aggression. In past research, scientists have administered vasopressin to children with autism and found improvements to social behaviors.
For the new study, scientists at Georgia State University investigated the neurochemical pathways that vasopressin works on. To do so, they used CRISPR to genetically engineer hamsters that lacked Avpr1a, the receptor that vasopressin binds to. Sure enough, the edited hamsters exhibited changes to their social behaviors – but not the ones that the team expected.
“We were really surprised at the results,” said H. Elliot Albers, lead researcher on the study. “We anticipated that if we eliminated vasopressin activity, we would reduce both aggression and social communication. But the opposite happened.”....
....MUCH MORE
The last thing you want to hear from the research guy trying to explain the hyper-aggressive mutant hamsters: “We were really surprised at the results,”
