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A comment on Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection. Parent comment

Re:Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection by bargl on Thursday September 05, 2013 @12:27PM (#6335086)
> The team at Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, in Baltimore, used lab mice that were genetically engineered to have extra copies of about half the genes found on human chromosome 21, leading to Down syndrome-like conditions such as smaller brains and difficulty learning to navigate a maze.

So they are attempting to build DS into mice and then mitigate the damage caused by their "DS like" enhancements to mice. Sounds like the right path to a solution to me.

Catchy title's make the front page. Sure they may have misled the readers a little bit, but if you read the entire article you can typically criticize the title. They definitely could have named it better, but balanced with the content I think it was appropriate.

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_syndrome. I'm not saying that Wikipedia is the definitive answer on spelling, but it does give them at least some footing for their spelling.

Edit: tokenadult has a much better answer on the spelling than I do, his comment wasn't there when I starter writing this though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection by epo on Thursday September 05, 2013 @12:35PM (#6335125)
They did not build DS into mice, they created one of its symptoms which they then reversed, hence my comparison to exaggerating the effects of sticking plasters. The mice did not have anything like DS and claiming this experiment as having anything to do with DS is sensationalist exaggeration, in fact it is borderline dishonest.
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Re:Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection by topynate on Thursday September 05, 2013 @12:40PM (#6335154)
So what would be required for the mice to have something sufficiently Down's-like? They didn't shrink the brains with toxins or anything, that shrinkage was a natural consequence of duplication of genes, just as it is in human DS.
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Re:Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection by epo on Thursday September 05, 2013 @12:50PM (#6335229)
Some genes, not all of them. The experiment was about brain shrinkage, not Down's syndrome.
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Re:Down syndrome reversed in newborn mice with single injection by vilhelm_s on Thursday September 05, 2013 @01:06PM (#6335360)
The mice are made specifically as an animal model of Down syndrome. See http://dmm.biologists.org/content/4/5/596.full
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