The identification of the genes involved in morphological variation in nature is still a major challenge. Here, we explore a new approach: we combine 178 samples from a natural hybrid zone between two subspecies of the house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus and Mus musculus musculus), and high coverage of the genome (~ 145K SNPs) to identify loci underlying craniofacial shape variation. Due to th...

Polymorphism of animal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been shown to involve point mutations and limited length variations affecting essentially noncoding regions. In two wild mice of the European subspecies Mus mus musculus we found a mitochondrial mutant with a very large deletion in a coding region. The deletion is 5 kbp long (31% of the mitochondrial chromosome) and encompasses six tRNA genes...

Within the framework of a pilot project on the analysis of the mouse proteome, we investigated C57BL/6 mice (Mus musculus), a standard inbred strain of the mouse, starting with the analysis of brain, liver and heart proteins. Tissue extraction and the separation of proteins were performed with techniques offering a maximum of resolution. Proteins separated were analyzed by mass spectrometry. Ge...

We compared four inbred mouse strains in their physical performance, measured as a maximal treadmill running time, characteristics of soleus muscle, anatomic character, and growth. The strains used were Mus musculus domesticus [C57BL/6 (B6) and BALB/c], Mus musculus molossinus (MSM/Ms), and Mus spretus. Maximal running time was significantly different among these four mouse strains. Running tim...

the highly conserved morphology and chromosomal structures of house mouse, mus musculus, provides a good model for chromosomal studies. sex-autosome translocations is one of the rarest chromosomal rearrangements among mammals and therefore sex-autosome translocations has been offered as accurate taxonomic markers to identify species with similar morphological traits. in this study, we described...

BACKGROUND Mus musculus is a pest in urban and rural habitats where it consumes and contaminates food and may transmit diseases to human and domestic animals. Its control by anticoagulants is partially effective because of aversive behaviours and resistance. In this context, we wanted to assess the potential of the use of predator odours as repellents in experimental feeding trials using urine ...

Hantaviruses are found in widely scattered areas of the world and are transmitted by inhalation of virus-contaminated aerosols of rodent excreta. The present study was undertaken in Kuwait to investigate the serological evidence for hantavirus infection in rodents and humans. Sera were collected from 283 wild rodents and 183 human subjects (46 Kuwaitis and 137 non-Kuwaitis). The rodent sera wer...

Patterns of genetic variation provide insight into the evolutionary history of a species. Mouse (Mus musculus) is a good model for this purpose. Here we present the analysis of genealogies of the 21 nuclear loci and one mitochondrial DNA region in M. musculus based on our nucleotide sequences of nine inbred strains from three M. musculus subspecies (musculus, domesticus, and castaneus) and one ...

In humans and mice, meiotic recombination events cluster into narrow hotspots whose genomic positions are defined by the PRDM9 protein via its DNA binding domain constituted of an array of zinc fingers (ZnFs). High polymorphism and rapid divergence of the Prdm9 gene ZnF domain appear to involve positive selection at DNA-recognition amino-acid positions, but the nature of the underlying evolutio...

b a ckground: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) is endemic in many parts of iran. recently its incidence isconsiderable in different parts of jahrom district, in fars province, southern iran. the aims of our study were to in- vestigate the prevalence of leishmania infection, and identify and characterize the   leishmania species present, among the rodents by molecular methods in a new ende...