Grown Mice With Hybrid Brains Can Smell Using Rat’s Neurons [Study]

Animals can still smell using another animal's neurological hardware. Researchers learned that grown mice can smell using rats' neurons.

Mice With Hybrid Brain Can Smell Using Rats' Neurons

In a new study, scientists have bred mice whose brains contain some rat cells. This was made possible by the transplantation of neurons or organoids, which are tiny brain-like structures, from one species into another, such as mouse-grown rat tissues. These techniques were limited, though, because the new cells didn't always integrate well with the existing brain.

Soon after fertilization, they injected rat stem cells into mouse embryos via a procedure known as blastocyst complementation, which allowed the rat and mouse cells to grow and integrate together spontaneously. This particular approach has produced successful hybrid brains utilizing cells from two distinct species for the first time.

Interestingly, despite the fact that mice and rats have different brain sizes and have evolved independently for millions of years, the mouse brain environment changed the timing of rat neuron growth and promoted synaptic connections between rat and mouse neurons.

According to geneticist Kristin Baldwin from The Scripps Research Institute in the US, "you could see rat cells throughout almost the entire mouse brain," which surprised them. It indicates that insertion barriers are low, implying that rat neurons are a good substitute for many types of mouse neurons.

Rat neurons took over and assisted the mice's brains in processing scents and locating food when smell-related mouse neurons were disabled or died, enabling them to smell the environment through the neurological apparatus of another animal.

It's the first time an animal has utilized the senses of another to see and react to its environment, showing how flexible the brain can be to accommodate many kinds of brain cells.

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Mice vs. Rats

Rats and mice are hard to tell apart. They both belong to the rodent family and look very similar to each other. If they venture inside, they have the potential to wreak a great deal of harm.

Rats and mice have similar coloring, but you can tell them apart thanks to a few differences in other characteristics. The primary visual distinctions between rats and mice can be observed from their snout to tail:

A rat's nose is blunter than a mouse's, which has a more triangular nose.
Mice have huge, floppy ears in proportion to their body size.
Compared to mice, rats have longer, thicker, and hairless tails.

They also have behavioral differences. Between the two, mice are smaller but braver. They are curious beings and tend to explore new things. On the other hand, rats live in fear and are very cautious, so they don't explore as much and are more challenging to trap.

Mice can also hide in smaller places due to their size and they are skilled climbers. Rats are less likely to climb and prefer to build their nests in lower levels.