My, what, uh, nice hair you have...
Among the mutant lab mice that scientists have dreamed up, there's a particularly funny-looking nude mouse
. Now scientists have managed to make it look even more ridiculous by adding just one small tuft of black hair on its back. Getting the hair follicles to sprout was no small feat of bioengineering. As reported in a new paper
in Nature Communications, researchers took stem cells from bald mice as well as men and implanted them in the skin of the nude mice. A plastic sheath guided the growing hair through layers of the skin, and voila. The individual hairs could also stand up on their ends---just like how your body hair stands up when you're cold--which means the bioengineered follicles even connected to the small muscle
that control piloerection
. And if you ever wanted to a naked, red-eyed mouse with one tuft of black hair to stare straight into your soul, do not miss the video below. [via Nature News
] Image and video courtesy of Takashi Tsuji / Tokyo University of Science