New York City Mice May Be Evolving to Eat Fast Food Like Pizza
Chris Baraniuk
There are always better restaurants in the city, and that could be making the town mice of New York
genetically distinct from their country cousins. Stephen Harris at the State University of New York and Jason Munshi-South of Fordham University in New York City caught 48 white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) from three New York parks and three nearby rural areas. The mice are native to this part of North America, so the pair wanted to find out whether some had begun to evolve for city living.
They examined the mice’s RNA to see if the rural and urban populations expressed different genes.
Ultimately, they homed in on 19 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): places in the genome where a single letter varies from mouse to mouse. Several SNPs were in genes associated with digestion and other metabolic processes. One highlighted gene was used to produce omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. A version of this gene appears to have been selected
for in humans as we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. The work is “at the forefront of biology”, says Jonathan Richardson at Providence College in Rhode Island.
The cheeseburger hypothesis. The survey also highlighted genes linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which may result from having to process a lot of fatty acids. This could be due to a diet rich in fast foods. “The first thing that we thought of was the ‘cheeseburger hypothesis’: urban mice subsidising their diet on human food waste,” says Harris. If so, the mice may be like “Pizza Rat”, a New York rodent videoed carrying a whole slice of pizza. In line with this, city mice had larger livers with more scar tissue, says Harris, who was at the City University of New York when most of the work was done. However, the sample size was too small to be sure. Besides, New York offers other foods, like seeds, nuts and berries in its parks. Such resources are more plentiful than in rural areas, where there is more competition from other species.
The mice may be enjoying an eclectic mix of urban food resources, says Richardson, occasionally boosting their calorie intake by dining on human food waste. The next step will be to examine the function of these genes more closely to assess their impact on fitness and selection, says Hopi Hoekstra at Harvard University. Hoekstra says the work is part of a wave of studies investigating examples of rapid adaptation. “That provides us with a really cool way to study evolutionary change, sort of as it’s happening,” she says.
genetically distinct from their country cousins. Stephen Harris at the State University of New York and Jason Munshi-South of Fordham University in New York City caught 48 white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) from three New York parks and three nearby rural areas. The mice are native to this part of North America, so the pair wanted to find out whether some had begun to evolve for city living.
They examined the mice’s RNA to see if the rural and urban populations expressed different genes.
Ultimately, they homed in on 19 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs): places in the genome where a single letter varies from mouse to mouse. Several SNPs were in genes associated with digestion and other metabolic processes. One highlighted gene was used to produce omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. A version of this gene appears to have been selected
for in humans as we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. The work is “at the forefront of biology”, says Jonathan Richardson at Providence College in Rhode Island.
The cheeseburger hypothesis. The survey also highlighted genes linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which may result from having to process a lot of fatty acids. This could be due to a diet rich in fast foods. “The first thing that we thought of was the ‘cheeseburger hypothesis’: urban mice subsidising their diet on human food waste,” says Harris. If so, the mice may be like “Pizza Rat”, a New York rodent videoed carrying a whole slice of pizza. In line with this, city mice had larger livers with more scar tissue, says Harris, who was at the City University of New York when most of the work was done. However, the sample size was too small to be sure. Besides, New York offers other foods, like seeds, nuts and berries in its parks. Such resources are more plentiful than in rural areas, where there is more competition from other species.
The mice may be enjoying an eclectic mix of urban food resources, says Richardson, occasionally boosting their calorie intake by dining on human food waste. The next step will be to examine the function of these genes more closely to assess their impact on fitness and selection, says Hopi Hoekstra at Harvard University. Hoekstra says the work is part of a wave of studies investigating examples of rapid adaptation. “That provides us with a really cool way to study evolutionary change, sort of as it’s happening,” she says.
Keywords
• Restaurants
• City
• Town mice
• Country cousins
• Country cousins
• New York
• Genetics / Genes
• Evolve / Evolution / Evolutionary Change
• Digestion
• Biology
• Cheeseburger / Fast Foods
• Fatty Liver Disease / Disease
• Human Food Waste
• Pizza / Pizza Rat
• Scar Tissue
• Competition
• Adaption
My Quick Responses to the Article
Scan and put in sketchbook
Planning and Development
Lots of annotation helped me, questioning to myself and using the prompts, iteration of ideas, can things be made larger or smaller for effect? What purpose will that serve? What tone of voice do I want to use? Modify, minify, magnify, substitute, rearrange, reverse, combine, adapt, point of view. What can these things mean?
Final idea
• Genes (turned to jeans)
• Levi jeans are a hugely iconic American brand
• Crocs are an American brand, based in Colorado where I have just come back from on a short trip, where they are extremely popular for their comfort and sense of home pride. There is a bit of negativity towards Crocs elsewhere because of their ugliness, garishness, having been turned into a bit f a meme on the internet, associations with children, lazy people, people with no fashion sense and people from poorer backgrounds.
• Tapping into nostalgia changing the "pizza rat" into Steamboat Willie and the steering wheel into a pizza (Steamboat Willie being an American short animation by Walt Disney and the beginnings of Mickey Mouse), with a slight looks of Scratchy Mouse from The Simpsons (another iconic American animation and brand), changing the pizza slice in jeans to a Spongebob Squarepants-style character holding his spatula (yet another iconic American animation with ties to fast food).
• Comedic, nostalgic, friendly tones and voices filled with lots of ideas of Americanisation and fast food.
Reflection
After returning the the course after an extremely tough, oftentimes traumatic, year this was a really nice session to return to, to get used to generating ideas in a really quick way with no technical proficiency required - much of which I have lost in my sight loss journey over the past 13 months anyway. I'm not confident in my editorial illustration abilities and this broke it down into easier and manageable chunks; focusing on key words, playing with those to come up with weird and wonderful ideas beyond what you would originally conceive, and collaboration.
The collaboration portion was much more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be. I originally had a negative feeling towards the word "collaboration" being mentioned on my first day back but this enabled me to get to know someone on my course because of it and feel more comfortable in the studio environment again. I loved the unexpected outcomes that we got, changing the tone and context of what I had originally had in mind when drawing my original character or idea, and I loved using the chubby sticks - a medium I have never used before. The entire session was very playful, very freeing, very loose and married nicely with the chubby stick and my silly ideas generations.
In regards to ideas generation, the prompts really helped when I got stuck in the session and to just keep going no matter how simple or abstract an idea got and I want to take aspect for the future so I don't allow myself to get art block again - or at least to minimise it as much as possible. From planning, development and the final idea I do think I overworked the final outcome. I was nervous and knew others would do the same, making something that looked great to show everyone else, and I felt a sense to prove myself after a year of being out of the course. I wanted to show that my work is okay looking and that I deserve to be here despite being the girl with the Guide Dog that no one knows, despite a finished outcome not being required. It isn't finished and it isn't the best thing ever but it is overworked. Some of the charm was lost in making the Spongebob Pizza character more three dimensional rather than the flat doodle he originally was and I should have kept it simple.
The collaboration portion was much more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be. I originally had a negative feeling towards the word "collaboration" being mentioned on my first day back but this enabled me to get to know someone on my course because of it and feel more comfortable in the studio environment again. I loved the unexpected outcomes that we got, changing the tone and context of what I had originally had in mind when drawing my original character or idea, and I loved using the chubby sticks - a medium I have never used before. The entire session was very playful, very freeing, very loose and married nicely with the chubby stick and my silly ideas generations.
In regards to ideas generation, the prompts really helped when I got stuck in the session and to just keep going no matter how simple or abstract an idea got and I want to take aspect for the future so I don't allow myself to get art block again - or at least to minimise it as much as possible. From planning, development and the final idea I do think I overworked the final outcome. I was nervous and knew others would do the same, making something that looked great to show everyone else, and I felt a sense to prove myself after a year of being out of the course. I wanted to show that my work is okay looking and that I deserve to be here despite being the girl with the Guide Dog that no one knows, despite a finished outcome not being required. It isn't finished and it isn't the best thing ever but it is overworked. Some of the charm was lost in making the Spongebob Pizza character more three dimensional rather than the flat doodle he originally was and I should have kept it simple.
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