Six-legged mice with extra limbs instead of genitals have been created by boffins and they could help find a cancer cure.
The shocking creation was made using rodent embryos.
The mice were given an extra pair of hind legs.
But this was at the expense of the mutant animals’ external genitalia.
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The strange study aimed to look at the early stages of development.
However, researchers were more intrigued by what it could tell them about early developmental diseases.
The team, at Gulbenkian Science Institute in Oeiras, in Portugal created the mice embryos, as reported on What’s The Jam.
Both animal and human embryos typically start as cells and then grow limbs as they develop.
However, the researchers wanted to look at the growth protein receptor known as Tgfbr1.
This helps determine where anatomy, such as limbs, grow in the body.
They inactivated the Tgfbr1 receptor’s gene encoding halfway through the development of mouse embryos.
At first, the scientists were looking into how this would affect the spinal cord.
But they were blown away when it created two extra hind legs.
After the accidental discovery, scientists now hope this could shed light on a number of developmental illnesses – including cancer.
The paper reads: “Identification of those mechanisms and determining whether they also operate in other physiological and pathological processes under the control of members of the Tgfβ/BMP signalling family might have far-reaching implications for our understanding of morphogenetic processes and disease.”
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