About
The Wild Mouse Genomes Project is a collaborative initiative to sequence and analyze the genomes of over 1000 wild-caught house mice (Mus musculus). Our goals are to catalog the breadth of wild mouse diversity, unlock the evolutionary mechanisms that have enabled house mice to successfully colonize diverse habitats across the globe, and understand how the rich diversity in wild mice can be harnessed to improve existing biomedical mouse models for human disease.
Why wild mice?
Inbred laboratory mouse strains have served as the workhorses for biomedical research for over a century. These strains were developed from small populations of “fancy mice” maintained and bred by hobbyists as pets in the early 1900s. As a result of their unique origin history, lab mouse genomes capture only a fraction of the genetic variation found in wild mouse populations, comprise an artificial mixture of three divergent house mouse subspecies genomes, and reflect a history of intense artificial selection for traits such as docility and increased reproductive output. These human-imposed selective pressures have likely purged significant disease-relevant trait variation from laboratory mouse genomes.
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Wild mice overcome many of the limitations of conventional laboratory mouse strains. Indeed, prior work from our groups has shown that wild mouse populations harbor many functional and disease-associated alleles, the majority of which are absent from lab mice. However, despite their incredible promise for biomedical research, we know remarkably little about the levels and patterning of genetic diversity in wild mice. Cataloguing the breadth of global wild mouse diversity stands to not only unlock fundamental insights about the evolution of this remarkable species but may also hold the key to improving existing mouse models of human disease.
Project Funding
