Despite what you might've seen in 1950s monster movies, it's difficult to raise mutant ants. For years biologists have altered the genetics of organisms as varied as mice and rice. Mutant fruit flies are a laboratory staple. But ants' complex life cycle hampered efforts to grow genetically engineered ants - until now. On Thursday, two independent research teams described their work deleting ant genes. Two papers chronicling the first mutant ants appeared in the journal Cell, along with a third study that altered ant behavior using an insect brain hormone. Claude Desplan, a New York University biologist and an author of one of the studies, said that, as far as he could tell, these ants are...
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