T H E mutant twirler, symbol Tw, of the house mouse, Mus musculus, was first recognized by the 'waltzing' behaviour which the heterozygotes show. It was later found to affect the morphology of the inner ear and, when homozygous, to cause death of new-born animals through harelip and cleft palate. This paper describes the behaviour and ear defects of heterozygotes and the appearance of homozygot...

We selectively amplified the spacer regions of genes for mouse 5S ribosomal RNA (rRNA), which are tandemly repeated, by the PCR method, using primers specific to the two ends of the coding region for 5S rRNA. Fragments of approximately 1.6 kb were amplified from DNA from the BALB/cCrSlc mouse (Mus musculus domesticus), the SM/J mouse (M. m. domesticus), the MOA mouse (M. m. musculus) and the SE...

TUDIES on the inheritance of nonspecific esterase forms of the house mouse (Mus musculus) have recently been reported from the serum (POPP and POPP 1962; PETRAS 1963), kidney ( RUDDLE and RODERICK 1965), and erythrocytes (PELZER 1965). A brief report (SHAW 1964) indicated inheritable esterase differences in kidney homogenates of the deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, and two rare genetically d...

Meiotic recombination safeguards proper segregation of homologous chromosomes into gametes, affects genetic variation within species, and contributes to meiotic chromosome recognition, pairing and synapsis. The Prdm9 gene has a dual role, it controls meiotic recombination by determining the genomic position of crossover hotspots and, in infertile hybrids of house mouse subspecies Mus m. musculu...

Genomic features such as rate of recombination and differentiation have been suggested to play a role in species divergence. However, the relationship of these phenomena to functional organization of the genome in the context of reproductive isolation remains unexplored. Here, we examine genomic characteristics of the species boundaries between two house mouse subspecies (Mus musculus musculus/...

Genome scans of polymorphisms promise to provide insights into the patterns and frequencies of positive selection under natural conditions. The use of microsatellites as markers has the potential to focus on very recent events, since in contrast to SNPs, their high mutation rates should remove signatures of older events. We assess this concept here in a large-scale study. We have analyzed two p...

Deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) have been identified as the principal host species for Sin Nombre hantavirus. Assessment of deer mouse immune responses to this agent has been difficult because of a lack of reagents with defined specificity for the discrimination of leukocyte populations. The purpose of this work was to identify currently available immunological reagents directed at house mou...