Abstract
BackgroundRhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) are widely-used as experimental animals in biomedical research and are closely related to other laboratory macaques, such as cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), and to humans, sharing a last common ancestor from about 25 million years ago. Although rhesus monkeys have been studied extensively under field and laboratory conditions, research has been limited by the lack of genetic resources. The present study generated placenta full-length cDNA libraries, characterized the resulting expressed sequence tags, and described their utility for comparative mapping with human RefSeq mRNA transcripts.ResultsFrom rhesus monkey placenta full-length cDNA libraries, 2000 full-length cDNA sequences were determined and 1835 rhesus placenta cDNA sequences longer than 100 bp were collected. These sequences were annotated based on homology to human genes. Homology search against human RefSeq mRNAs revealed that our collection included the sequences of 1462 putative rhesus monkey genes. Moreover, we identified 207 genes containing exon alterations in the coding region and the untranslated region of rhesus monkey transcripts, despite the highly conserved structure of the coding regions. Approximately 10% (187) of all full-length cDNA sequences did not represent any public human RefSeq mRNAs. Intriguingly, two rhesus monkey specific exons derived from the transposable elements of AluYRa2 (SINE family) and MER11B (LTR family) were also identified.ConclusionThe 1835 rhesus monkey placenta full-length cDNA sequences described here could expand genomic resources and information of rhesus monkeys. This increased genomic information will greatly contribute to the development of evolutionary biology and biomedical research.
Highlights
Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) are widely-used as experimental animals in biomedical research and are closely related to other laboratory macaques, such as cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), and to humans, sharing a last common ancestor from about 25 million years ago
In contrast to the great number of human fulllength cDNA sequences in public databases such as the RefSeq mRNAs of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, only a small number of rhesus monkey mRNA sequences and expressed sequence tag (EST) have been deposited in public databases
The length distributions of the ESTs are shown in Figure 1. cDNA length ranged from 170-1174 bp with an average of 858 bp
Summary
Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) are widely-used as experimental animals in biomedical research and are closely related to other laboratory macaques, such as cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), and to humans, sharing a last common ancestor from about 25 million years ago. The relationship between humans and rhesus monkeys is even more important because biomedical research has come to depend on these primates as experimental animal models [2]. Due to their genetic, physiologic, and metabolic similarity to humans, this species serves as an essential research tool in neuroscience, behavioral biol-. Genome-scale collections of the full-length cDNAs of expressed genes become important for the analysis of the structure and function of genes [11]. In contrast to the great number of human fulllength cDNA sequences in public databases such as the RefSeq mRNAs of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, only a small number of rhesus monkey mRNA sequences and ESTs have been deposited in public databases
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