Mighty mice run and run
Friday, 2 November 2007Agençe France-Presse

WASHINGTON, DC: Geneticists have engineered a line of "mighty mice" whose human equivalent would have similar abilities to the U.S. bicycling champion Lance Armstrong, they say.


The breed of mice can run at a speed of 20 meters per minute for up to six hours without stopping – covering six kilometres – said biochemist Richard Hanson of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

"They are metabolically similar to Lance Armstrong biking up the Pyrenees; they utilise mainly fatty acids for energy and produce very little lactic acid," said Hanson, the senior author of the article which was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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"From a very early age, the 'PEPCK-Cmus' mice ran continuously in their cages," said Parvin Hakimi, a researcher in the Hanson lab. The mighty mice primarily relied on "fatty acids as a source of energy during exercise, while the control animals rapidly switched from fatty acid metabolism to using muscle glycogen (carbohydrates) as a fuel; this dramatically raised the blood lactate levels," she said.