Photos from open sources of
The British are currently suffering severely from rats. In some cities in the United Kingdom this year was marked A 10 percent increase in the population of these dangerous rodents. Specialists try to poison tailed pests with poison, but this helps only in part. That’s why the fantastic idea of creating mutant rats.
The fact is that rats quickly stop responding to poison, while while it begins to accumulate in the ecosystem, killing others, harmless creatures. London municipal employees desperate in their struggle with these creatures, turned to scientists for help, and people of science, apparently, have found a suitable solution to the problem.
Specialists from the University of Edinburgh thought that rats must be genetically modified in the literal sense of the word. Such gene control will make rodents infertile, forcing their population to go down. This method is already used in test mode against mosquitoes, allowing you to fight Zika fever and malaria, however successfully do the same with mammals – this will be a real breakthrough in science.
CRISPR gene experiment mutant rats
The method is based on the perspective in modern gene an engineering process called CRISPR. Such a tool will allow scientists change the genome of animals in the laboratory and then release them in the wild, where they will create offspring and give him the infertility genes. In a few generations, rats will become much smaller, and then they can even die out, which is unlikely to sadden any of city dwellers.
A photo from open sources
Experts say that there are several tens of millions of rats, and the fight against them annually requires cash costs of 1.2 billion pounds. Time from there’s even really huge specimens here, similar to monster rats from horror films. United Kingdom It is considered one of the most infected rat countries in the world. Here why it was decided to conduct the CRISPR gene experiment here.
What this will give – no one knows. Similar experiments always there are opponents who believe that gross human intervention never brings anything good into nature. After all, even one a seemingly “humane” step of a man, like a general shooting of wolves in order to preserve the population of other animals, led to the opposite the result. And here – genetic engineering against yet another “unnecessary” predators …
Rat Time
