grasshopper mouse – NIH Director's Blog (original) (raw)

Gain Without Pain: New Clues for Analgesic Design

Posted on November 7th, 2013 by Dr. Francis Collins

A mouse and a scorpion sharing a space and facing nose-to-nose.

Photo Credit: Matthew Rowe, Michigan State University

If you’re a southern grasshopper mouse, nothing beats a delicious snack of scorpion. But what, you might ask, prevents that from being a painful or even fatal event? Well, this native of the Arizona desert has evolved an amazing resistance to the stings of the bark scorpion—stings so painful and toxic they kill house mice and other rodents of similar size.

Why am I sharing this bit of natural history? Well, it turns out that by studying the grasshopper mouse and its unusual diet, NIH-funded researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine and collaborators at the University of Texas, Austin, have identified a new target on nerve fibers that could lead to more effective and less addictive pain medications for humans.

Posted In: Science

Tags: amino acid, bark scorpion, grasshopper mouse, house mouse, National Institutes of Health, Nav 1.7, Nav 1.8, NIH, nociceptors, pain, pain medication, protein, scorpion toxin, venom