COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Muroid Rodent Phylogenetics Using Multiple Nuclear and Mitochondrial Genes

Drs。斯科特·斯捷潘（佛罗里达州立大学）和罗纳德·阿德金斯（田纳西大学健康科学中心）获得了一笔资助，用于研究包括普通小鼠、大鼠和仓鼠在内的最多样化的哺乳动物家族（鼠科）的进化关系。尽管Muroidea包括所有哺乳动物的四分之一，并且对农业，疾病和生物医学研究具有巨大的重要性，但这些世界范围内物种之间的关系非常不清楚。他们将利用计算机分析来自270多个物种的许多基因的DNA序列，重建Muroidea的进化家谱。实验室小鼠和大鼠是人类疾病的主要研究模型，并且已经完成了它们的完整基因组测序。此外，Muroidea的成员携带许多人类疾病，如鼠疫和汉坦病毒，并且可以占食草动物造成的农业损失的一半以上。值得注意的是，Muroidea的全球分布使它们在理解塑造世界的气候、地质和生态变化方面发挥了独特的作用。这些物种的进化树将阐明将啮齿动物与其他哺乳动物（包括人类）区分开来的大规模基因组变化，并将极大地促进我们对它们作为生物医学模型和疾病媒介的作用的理解，并将有助于确定地质和气候事件如何促进进化过程。

Drs. Scott Steppan (Florida State University) and Ronald Adkins (University of Tennessee Health Science Center) have received a grant to study the evolutionary relationships of the most diverse family of mammals (Muroidea) that includes the common mouse, rat, and hamster. Although Muroidea includes one fourth of all mammals and has enormous importance to agriculture, disease, and biomedical research, the relationships among these worldwide species are extremely unclear. They will reconstruct the evolutionary family tree of Muroidea using computer analysis of DNA sequences for many genes from over 270 species. The laboratory mouse and rat are the premier research models for human disease and have had their complete genomes sequenced. Additionally, members of Muroidea harbor many human diseases, such as plague and hantavirus, and can account for over half of the agricultural losses due to herbivores. Significantly, the worldwide distribution of Muroidea grants them a unique role in understanding the climatological, geological, and ecological changes that have shaped the world. The evolutionary tree of these species will clarify the large-scale genomic changes that distinguish rodents from other mammals (including humans) and will greatly facilitate our understanding of their roles as biomedical models and disease vectors, and will help determine how geological and climatological events contribute to the evolutionary process.