Researchers have accidentally turned adorable golden hamsters into feral hordes while trying to improve their ability to cooperate.
The CRISPR system (for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a method that allows direct intervention on DNA by cutting it as with a pair of scissors at a specific location in the genome.
Composed of a guide RNA that targets the part of the DNA to be modified and the Cas9 enzyme in charge of the actual cut, these “molecular scissors” were developed by the team led by Frenchwoman Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American Jennifer Doudna, double Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.
Read also: In Japan, a female macaque reverses 70 years of patriarchy
Since its invention in 2012, this biotechnology tool has been used countless times by researchers around the world, most often for the best but sometimes with unexpected or even worrying results. This is the case of work carried out by a team from Northwestern University in the United States, which conducted an experiment on golden hamsters, chosen in preference to mice because they have a developed social organization, in order to study a hormone, vasopressin, and its receptor, the Avpr1 gene. This gene is believed to regulate behaviors such as mutual aid and cooperation. The scientists were convinced that these altruistic behaviors would be amplified by deactivating the production of vasopressin. They were seriously mistaken.
While the small group of hamsters was supposed to evolve into an ideal community where harmony and good humor reign, they found themselves facing a horde of ultra-aggressive zombie rodents. “We were very surprised by this result”, admits disappointed Professor Elliot Albers, director of this study.
As soon as a genetically modified hamster was confronted with a congener without the slightest aggressiveness, it indulged in a rampage of gratuitous violence, biting, scratching and stalking its poor victim. However, this behavior only manifested itself when two individuals of the same sex were brought together.
For Professor Elliot Albers, the conclusion of this experiment is as surprising as it is depressing: “Although we know that vasopressin accentuates social behavior by acting in a number of brain regions, it is possible that the more global effects of the receptor Avpr1a are on the contrary inhibitory, he explains. In fact, we don’t understand this system as well as we thought. Hoping that no army dares to transform these hamsters into super-soldiers with tenfold savagery…