When University of Cambridge neurobiologist Jenny Morton began working with sheep five years ago, she anticipated docile, dull creatures. Instead she discovered that sheep are complex and curious. Morton, who studies neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, is helping evaluate sheep as new large animal models for human brain diseases.
Huntington's is a fatal, hereditary illness that causes a cascade of cell death in the brain's basal ganglia region. The idea to use sheep to study this disease arose in 1993 in New Zealand, a country where sheep outnumber humans seven to one. Researchers had already identified disorders shared by humans and sheep, but University of Auckland neuroscientist Richard Faull and geneticist Russell Snell had a more ambitious notion. They decided to develop a line of sheep carrying Huntington's, which is brought on by repeats within the gene IT15 , in the hopes of studying the condition's progression and developing a treatment. They accomplished their goal in 2006 after extensive efforts.
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