Given the standard practice in lab experimentation using mice (which is to "dispose" of them after their usefulness for a test is done) I'm extremely troubled by the idea of gene editing experimentation using mice to make them more intelligent (their standard intelligence would already be surprising to many people).

While I already think it's unethical to use animals the way we do, the idea that we're experimenting with how close we can get to bestowing them with human intelligence before killing them is saddening.

Need to read this asap, but 6.5% is an exceedingly small effect size and not robust given many confounding developmental and technical factors. The typical coefficient of error between volumes of even large brain regions in genetically identical mice is usually well over 5%. And I suspect the transgene was only tested on one genetic background—-usually C57BL/6J.

Will emend this post tomorrow with corrections after reading carefully. I can say with reasonsble assurance that no one has measured and weighed more mouse brains than I have ;-) (except you John Wong)

Meta comment: 11/13 comments currently are pop-culture references (Flowers for Algernon, Pinky and the Brain, other movies) or generic phrases and only 2 comments relate to the actual article. I've been on HN for over a decade, and this is the worst it's ever been.

Heck, if you give mice all of our DNA, they’ll become exactly like us!

That is neat but doesn't mean much by itself without some kind of test on cognition. The size of a creatures brain doesn't really correlate with intelligence very well.