Monster Hamsters Accidentally Created Turning Mice Models Into Rodents That Chase, Bite, Pin Down Each Other

Researchers at Georgia State University recently produced new rodents minus the hormone vasopressin in an initiative to raise "social communication" between rodents.

A Mail Online report said that the scientists inadvertently bred a horde of extraordinarily aggressive hamsters after a gene-editing experiment to reduce aggression had gone wrong. Yet, the chemical change turned the Syrian hamster wild, prompting flights inside cages.

The ultra-vicious hamsters were pictured pinning, biting, and hunting each other. According to Professor Elliott Albers, lead researcher of the study, they anticipated that they could lessen aggression and social communication, although the opposite happened.

Essentially, the key hormone Avpr1 was believed to restrain friendship and bonding, with its removal expected to increase harmony between animals.

High Levels of Aggression in Mice Recorded

The lab experiment recorded high levels of aggression, though, towards other same-sex individuals. Commenting on their findings, Professor Albers explained that they were really surprised at the results.

It was believed that vasopressin impacts the social behaviors of hamsters which include aggression and communication.

To examine further, scientists deactivated Avpr1a, taking out a receptor that interacts with vasopressin in key brain regions.

Currently immune to the hormone, it was believed the rodents would turn friendlier. The outcomes were anything but, with a heightened frequency, fighting, biting, pinning, and chasing down among the hamsters in their cages.

Link Between Biology and Behavior

The striking conclusions challenge the insight of the scientists into the link between biology and behavior. The professor added they do not understand the system as well as they thought.

He also said that the counterintuitive findings show a need to begin thinking about the actions of these receptors across the whole circuits of the brain, not just in specific regions of the brain, a related New Atlas report said.

Developing gene-editing hamsters was not easy. However, it is essential to understand that the neurocircuitry involved in human behavior and the researchers' model have applicability to human health.

Professor Albers said the gene-editing tests are intended to help solve neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and autism.

Study Findings

In the study published in the PNAS journal, the researchers' injections of sgRNA/Cas9 plasmid that targets the Avpr1 gene into hamsters, embryos generated a variety of indels at roughly the largest site in hamsters that survived to weaning.

Of these hamster models, a single female had a WT allele and a 47-base-pair deletion beginning 16 bases upstream from the start codon and ending 28 bases downstream from the start codon, and she was able to produce two liters with WT sire.

The female hamster's descendants were all discovered to have an all-base-pair or 10-base-pair deletion, which was subsequently passed on to their offspring, specifically generations F2, F3, and F4.

The study findings suggest that the C1, the founder, likely showed somatic mosaicism. Moreover, the start codon is present in the 11-base-pair and 10-base-pair deletions, although both generated a frame-shift mutation resulting in a premature stop codon.

A report about the recent development of gene-editing in hamsters is shown on UnFluenced's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Animals in Science.