ABSTRACT
Grooming, as an evolutionarily conserved repetitive behavior, is common in various animals, including humans, and serves essential functions including, but not limited to, hygiene maintenance, thermoregulation, de-arousal, stress reduction, and social behaviors. In rodents, grooming involves a patterned and sequenced structure, known as the syntactic chain with four phases that comprise repeated stereotyped movements happening in a cephalocaudal progression style, beginning from the nose to the face, to the head, and finally ending with body licking. The context-dependent occurrence of grooming behavior indicates its adaptive significance. This review briefly summarizes the neural substrates responsible for rodent grooming behavior and explores its relevance in rodent models of neuropsychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases with aberrant grooming phenotypes. We further emphasize the utility of rodent grooming as a reliable measure of repetitive behavior in neuropsychiatric models, holding promise for translational psychiatry. Herein, we mainly focus on rodent self-grooming. Allogrooming (grooming being applied on one animal by its conspecifics via licking or carefully nibbling) and heterogrooming (a form of grooming behavior directing towards another animal, which occurs in other contexts, such as maternal, sexual, aggressive, or social behaviors) are not covered due to space constraints.
ABSTRACT
Niviventer sacer (Rodentia: Muridae) had been regarded as a subspecies of N. confucianus, i.e. N. c. sacer, and was raised as a distinct species recently by our laboratory. We sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of N. sacer first and annotated the genome structure. The total length of the genome was 16,308 base pairs (bp) containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA genes (rRNAs), 22 transfer RNA genes (tRNAs), and a control region. We also constructed the phylogenetic tree by maximum-likelihood method and it demonstrated that N. sacer was the sister clade of N. confucianus.
ABSTRACT
The complete mitochondrial genome of the Dongyangjiang White-toothed Shrew (Crocidura dongyangjiangensis), a newly discovered Crocidura species, is sequenced and characterized. The total length of the genome is 16,883 bp, and has similar base composition and gene arrangement to other vertebrates. It contains 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), two ribosomal RNA (rRNA), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA), a replication origin (OL) and a control region. The phylogenetic tree shows that C. dongyangjiangensis was fully resolved in a clade with three other species of Crocidura and it has a sibling relationship with Crocidura tanakae. This analysis reveals the evolutionary relationship of 16 Crocidura species.
