Rhesus macaque genome study enhances our understanding of human genetic variation

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Missouri and the University of Washington have taken a major step toward improving our understanding of the genetic variation in the rhesus macaque, the most widely studied nonhuman primate in biomedical research.

“We have actually identified thousands of new mutations in the population of research animals. Now colleagues all over the country who are investigating various aspects of health and disease using rhesus macaques can begin to make use of that information,” said Dr. Jeffrey Rogers, associate professor at the Human Genome Sequencing Center and Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor and one of the corresponding authors of the study.