Paul A Young

Animal Group, Saunders Institute at BC, Canada
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Zoology, 2013, Vol. 3, No. 5   doi: 10.5376/ijmz.2013.03.0005
Received: 15 Mar., 2013    Accepted: 25 Mar., 2013    Published: 03 Apr., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Young, 2013, Molecular Profile of Treeshrew, a Promising Experimental Animal for Medical Research, Int'l J. Mol. Zoo., Vol.3, No.5, 17-19 (doi:10.5376/ ijmz.2013. 03.0005)

Scandentia order in Euarchontoglires consists of two families, Tupaiidae and Ptilocercidae, including five genera that contain 20 species. Genus Tupaia having 15 species is the largest genus in the order Scandentia. Most species in Scandentia have a karyotype 2n=52–68, therein, the well-known common treeshrew (Tupaia glis) has 2n=60; Northern treeshrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis, has 2n=62; pygmy treeshrew (Tupaia minor) has 2n=66 and mountain treeshrew (Tupaia montana) has 2=68, whereas only one species Mindanao treeshrew (Urogaleeveretti) has 2n=44. The whole genome Northern treeshrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis) was sequenced and assembled recently. The size of a 2.86 GB genome was assembled that contains approximately 22 063 protein coding genes very closer to human gene number, and contains 35% of the repeat important element, and 14% of the dominated transposeon in the treeshrew genome. The functional annotation of some important genes and gene families will facilitate treeshrew becoming a promising experimental animal for medicine evaluation alternative to nonhuman primates.

Treeshrew; Whole genome; Karyotype; Scandentia; Tupaia; Chinese treeshrew (Tupaia belangeri chinensis)