Pain Resistance in Mice

The Arizona bark in known to produce toxins that allows any predator who consumes it feels no pain. The primary organisms affected by mother nature are the grasshopper mice who feed on this bark and do not feel pain as they chew through the toxic bark. The sodium channel that enables pain in normal organisms has changed in several amino acids that causes no feeling of pain in these mice.

According to the researcher who has been doing this research ever since he was a post grad stated that the pain resistance is venom specific. Under the research of neurobiology Ashlee Rowe, her and her team studied two sodium channels called Nav1.7 and Nav1.8. As these receptors were studied, it was found that there was a response from these channels in House mice but not in grasshopper mice. Further research was done and it was found that the venom from the bark stopped the Nav1.8 activity which cause the pain resistance. 

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