Abstract
Cavia aperea is a wild guinea pig found throughout South America. The previously published mitochondrial sequence for C. aperea was highly divergent from the C. porcellus sequence and contained stop codons within open reading frames. Here we resequenced the mitochondrial genomes of C. aperea and C. porcellus. Both sequences reflect gene organization typical for mammalian mitochondrial DNA. Our C. aperea mtDNA sequence shows that all of the open reading frames are intact, but confirms the strikingly low level of sequence identity (92.7%) with the closely related C. porcellus mtDNA.
Highlights
Cavia aperea is a wild guinea pig found through large parts of South America (Rood 1972)
Allometric studies confirm that the laboratory strain Cavia porcellus descended from C. aperea (Kruska and Steffen 2013)
Both C. aperea and C. porcellus have been used in behavioral research and they may provide a superior model for reproductive research to mouse because of similarities between progesterone levels in pregnancy in humans and in cavies and the potential for preterm delivery (Mitchell and Taggart 2009)
Summary
Cavia aperea is a wild guinea pig found through large parts of South America (Rood 1972). Allometric studies confirm that the laboratory strain Cavia porcellus descended from C. aperea (Kruska and Steffen 2013). Both C. aperea and C. porcellus have been used in behavioral research and they may provide a superior model for reproductive research to mouse because of similarities between progesterone levels in pregnancy in humans and in cavies and the potential for preterm delivery (Mitchell and Taggart 2009). Hybrids between aperea and porcellus have been generated for studies of chromosome structure (George et al 2009), reproduction (Rood and Weir 1970) and enzymology (Carter et al 1972).
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