Superhero mice can smell explosives

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Superhero mice can smell explosives

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Sniffer mice that could save lives with a twitch of their nose are being bred by scientists.

15 October,2012 10:48 pm

The ‘danger mice’ have been genetically modified so that their noses are hundreds of times more sensitive to the scent of explosives than house mice.In future, they could be deployed to countries scarred by war to rapidly sniff out landmines, which are then cleared by a human handler.Although the project, funded by the US government’s health research arm - may sound rather off-the-wall, the idea of super-sniffer rodents is not without precedent.A Belgian charity already uses giant African rats to sniff out TNT and has deployed them in Mozambique and Tanzania and on the Thai-Burmese border.However, while the HeroRATs, as they are called, are very good at their job, it takes nine months of painstaking work to train them to detect TNT.The Society for Neuroscience’s annual conference in New Orleans heard that the answer could be to use genetic modification to bypass the need for this extensive training.Researcher Charlotte D’Hulst said: ‘The rats are very effective but mice have some advantages as mine detectors because they are cheaper to manage and house and easier to breed.’In addition, it is relatively easy to manipulate the key cells in the mouse nose.It is hoped that the animals’ inbuilt sensitivity to TNT-like chemicals means they will not have to be trained. Instead, they will naturally home in on explosives.Possibilities include planting a chip under their skin that will sense changes in their behaviour that indicate that they have spotted a mine.Dr D’Hulst, who describes the mice as biosensors, or biological sensors, said: ‘This is only for detection purposes. You’d still need the human handlers to take the mine out. ‘There are about 72 nations contaminated or affected by mines.‘The big problem with mines is that they are an enduring legacy of conflict, so after the wars have ended communities are still impeded from going back to their normal daily lives.‘Mine removal is a very expensive, very lengthy and hard business and there is a critical need for a TNT biosensor.’ The Red Cross said that the danger mice would only ever be one means of detecting hidden explosives.It added that in an area packed with mines, the animals noses may become quickly overwhelmed.