Mice: not completely dedicated to the cause of evil

To provide a balance of rodent science news, I’d like to point out that a new paper reports that they might be playing a part in the resurrection of an extinct species. Scientists have been taken old genetic material from the Tasmanian Tiger (or Tasmanian Wolf, whichever you prefer – it was actually a marsupial) which was hunted out a hundred years ago on Tasmania (and thousands of years ago on mainland Australia) and injected it into mice. Lo and behold, the DNA of the extinct mammal appears to be viable.

Before you remind me of the horrors of Jurassic Park (or, even worse, Jurassic Park III): the  planned benefits here are not the reintroduction of an extinct species, but the ability to study gene evolution and diversity in a living model.