Insights into mammalian biology from the wild house mouse Mus musculus

Abstract

The house mouse, Mus musculus, was established in the early 1900s as one of the first genetic model organisms owing to its short generation time, comparatively large litters, ease of husbandry, and visible phenotypic variants. For these reasons and because they are mammals, house mice are well suited to serve as models for human phenotypes and disease. House mice in the wild consist of at least three distinct subspecies and harbor extensive genetic and phenotypic variation both within and between these subspecies. Wild mice have been used to study a wide range of biological processes, including immunity, cancer, male sterility, adaptive evolution, and non-Mendelian inheritance. Despite the extensive variation that exists among wild mice, classical laboratory strains are derived from a limited set of founders and thus contain only a small subset of this variation. Continued efforts to study wild house mice and to create new inbred strains from wild populations have the potential to strengthen house mice as a model system.

Keywords: Mus musculus; chromosomes; classical inbred strain; evolution; evolutionary biology; genes; genomics; house mouse; mouse; the natural history of model organisms; wild mice.

Figure 1.. Worldwide distribution of Mus musculus subspecies (adapted from Didion and de Villena, 2013).

Ranges of M. musculus subspecies are indicated by hatching. Green: M. m. castaneus; blue: M. m. domesticus; red: M. m. musculus; grey: central populations and M. m. gentilulus. Note that house mice may not be found throughout the complete extent of hatched areas: for example, sub-arctic regions, the Sahara Desert, and the Amazon rainforest. Checkered areas indicate regions of hybridization. Red arrows indicate inferred routes of historical migrations and recent movements in association with humans. Reproduced from Springer and Didion J, de Villena FPM. 2013. Mammalian Genome 24:1–20.

Figure 2.. Wild derived house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) from Brazil.

Image credit: Taichi Suzuki. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05959.004