Blocked gene gives mice super smell

Time to hide the cheese. Researchers have created a mutant mouse strain whose sense of smell is much sharper and more sensitive than that of typical mice. Oddly enough, they did so by inactivating a gene in the rodents, not by adding one.

The knocked-out gene encodes a protein called Kv1.3, which normally assembles into some of the membrane channels that control the flow of potassium ions in and out of cells and thereby regulate how readily nerve cells respond to stimuli.