Thanks to University of Colorado Denver for this article.
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On the other hand, I learned yesterday from a lecture that if you remove smell receptors in drosophilla, they live longer, just as occurs with actual calorie restriction. And some of those calorie-restriction studies are looking at in utero effect, so there's no reason to assume the smell factor wouldn't apply there as well.
Logically, preganant woman have two choices:
1) eat a wide variety of foods, cause your childs brain to develop well, doom him/her to short life
2) eat bland foods, stunt their brain, but allow them to live forever (and probably in better health than the above).
Let's hope the model systems are flawed for people. These choices suck.
I have 5 year old identical twins who have very different food preferences. One loves peas while the other prefers carrots. One loves mushrooms while the other refuses to even put them in her mouth. One loves chocolate and the other is not really interested. I had a lot of food aversions while I was pregnant an almost lived on frosted mini-wheats and ice cream with strawberries. Yet both girls have love a large variety of foods.
I know the sample size (n=1) is small, but based on my results, I really wonder if we can assume the mouse model works for humans.
I really wonder if we can assume the mouse model works for humans.
Mice are a great model for some things. Doing a twin study would have been beneficial here!
I haven't read the article, but I suspect they looked at litters of pups which is sort of like a twin study. I hope someone does some kind of human follow up story.
I am always a bit skeptical about studies with "model" organisms anyway. I study insect physiology and molecular biology and Drosophila are actually a pretty poor model for insect studies. They do things that in ways that are unlike a lot of other insect species.
Totally agree, Cricket. This quote by the researcher is pretty short sighted given what we know about other correlations found in mice: "Due to the similarities in mammalian development, she said, there is no reason to think that experiments would produce different results in humans." There are plenty of cases, especially with drug trials, where compounds work amazingly well in mice and don't do a damn thing in humans.
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