Kliniken/Institute:
Institut für Zoologie
Projektdetails:
Mouse lemurs are the smallest primates on earth. They are endemic to Madagascar, where they are increasingly endangered by anthropogenically caused habitat degradation. Mouse lemurs are unique primate models for evolutionary, aging and genomic research. They exhibit extraordinary species diversity with limited vs. broad ranges in the Malagasy tropical forests. They have a long longevity related to body size (up to 15 years in the laboratory, about 9 years in the field) which is, however, much shorter than for common anthropoid primate models. Furthermore, some, but not all, aging individuals develop an AD-like pathology as found in Alzheimer patients or show human-like aging-related diseases such as cancer or ocular pathologies (e.g. cataracts). Likewise mouse lemurs are one of the primate models, for which the full genome is published. In 1985, Elke Zimmermann founded the colony of gray mouse lemurs of the Institute of Zoology (IfZ), by two founder pairs coming from the University of Tübingen (Jörg Ganzhorn). Founder pairs stem from the Rotterdam Zoo and were tracked back to their origin in south-eastern Madagascar (Mandena). To increase the genetic diversity of the colony, the offspring of these founders (originally based at the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, moving later on to the University of Constance, the German Primate Centre and finally completely to the Institute of Zoology at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover) were cross-bred with mouse lemurs coming from the Rotterdam Zoo, the Netherlands, in 1993 and the Parc Zoologique de Vincennes, France, in 1996. The colony is a self-sustaining breeding colony for which the life history of each individual mouse lemur is documented from birth to death in a mouse lemur database. Tissues from these individually known mouse lemurs are collected for veterinary purposes, or after the natural death of an animal. This colony of mouse lemurs is registered in the European and International Studbook of the Cheirogaleidae. Animals are used for non-invasive integrative and comparative research in the field of behaviour, physiology, reproduction, sensory biology, communication, cognition, genetics/genomics, aging, conservation biology and veterinary medicine. Furthermore, they are used for comparative research projects that are conducted together with several academic institutions studying the effect of different factors (e.g. general maintenance conditions, different photoperiod regimes, enrichment, group composition, genetic lineages) on the physiology, behaviour, communication, cognition, reproduction, longevity and health status of the colonies.
Resultate:
e.g.
Zhao, J.; Wang, G.; Ming, J.; Lin, Z.; Wang, Y.; The Tabula Microcebus Consortium; Wu, A.R.; Yang, C. (2022). Adversarial domain translation networks for integrating large-scale atlas-level single-cell datasets. Nature Computational Science, 2(5), 317-330. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-022-00251-y (*:U.R. is member of the Microcebus Consortium)
Fritz, R.; Zimmermann, E.; Meier, M.; Mestre-Francés, N.; Radespiel, U.; Schmidtke, D. (2020): Neurobiological substrates of animal personality and cognition in a nonhuman primate (Microcebus murinus). Brain and Behavior, e01752. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1752
Bemmann, M.; Schulz-Kornas, E.; Hammel, J.U.; Hipp, A.; Moosmann, J.; Herrel, A.; Rack, A.; Radespiel, U.; Zimmermann, E.; Kaiser, T.M.; Kupczik, K. (2020): Movement analysis of primate molar teeth under load using synchroton X-ray microtomography, Journal of Structural Biology, 213:107658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsb.2020.107658
Schmidtke, D.M.; Lempp, C.; Dubicanac, M.; Radespiel, U.; Zimmermann, E.; Baumgärtner, W.; Kästner, S.; Meier, M.; Balkema-Buschmann, A.; Harris, R.A.; Raveendran, M.; Muzny, D.M.; Worley, K.C. and Rogers, J. (2018): Spontaneous spongiform brainstem degeneration in a young mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) with conspicuous behavioral, motor, growth, and ocular pathologies. Comparative Medicine, 68, 1-7.
Dubicanac, M.; Radespiel, U.; Zimmermann E. (2017): A review on ocular findings in mouse lemurs: potential links to age and genetic background. Primate Biol., 4, 215-228.
Kooperationspartner:
Prof. Ingo Nolte, Klinik für kleine Haustiere
Prof. Fehr, Klinik für Heimtiere
Zoo Zürich, Schweiz; Zoo Frankfurt, Zoo Landau,
Zoo Vincennes, Frankreich; Zoo Pilsen, CZ
Prof. J.-M. Verdier, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, Frankreich