Abstract
WHILE TRYING TO MAKE a mouse contraceptive, Australian scientists instead made a mousepox virus so virulent that it killed infected mice. Their unintended creation has them warning that their method could possibly be used to make lethal human viruses and even biological weapons. Scientists from the Cooperative Research Center (CRC) for the Biological Control of Pest Animals, a research consortium in Canberra, have been studying immuno-contraceptive methods to stem rodent infestations that devastate grain crops globally In this experiment, they modified a mousepox virus by inserting the gene that controls the production of interleukin-4 (IL-4), an immune system signalling molecule. The researchers hoped that IL-4 would boost the animal's immune response and that mouse eggs would be rejected as foreign substances. Instead, the addedgene suppressed the animal's immune response to the mousepox virus and reduced the effectiveness of a vaccine against the virus. The results were a surprise, because genetically ...
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