CSI:Mickey

152 words.

Golly, but I’ve been getting uber-political lately! What’s up with that? Let’s get back to more important topics, like the strangulation and decapitation of mice!

Slashdot pointed me to an article, Suffocation leaves a mark in the genes, which describes a possible breakthrough in forensics that might help identify exactly how a person was killed by examining his late genes.

Kazuya Ikematsu and his colleagues anaesthetized and then killed two small groups of mice, by either strangulation with a string, or by decapitation. They dissected skin samples from the animals’ necks and compared the activity of a broad spectrum of genes inside the skin cells, by looking at the amount of RNA pumped out by those genes.

This sounds great for us, but the poor mice definitely got the short end of the stick. Imagine what they’re going to have to do when they get around to immolation, drowning, or blunt trauma!

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