Mice's love songs go wrong when 'language gene' is messed up

Mouse squeaks may have more in common with human speech than we realised. Tinkering with a gene associated with language in humans has been found to mess up mice's mating calls. The gene, called FOXP2, is one of the most-studied genes involved in human brain evolution. It was discovered in the 1990s in a study of a British family that had 16 relatives who had difficulty making certain mouth movements and complex sounds. The gene turned out to encode a protein that is found in the brain while we develop in the womb, and its shape suggests it works by helping to turn other genes on and off.