The nutritional status of individual monkeys in research projects is an important yet sometimes overlooked variable that complicates the interpretation of research findings. The authors offer a framework for scoring fatness and muscularity in a semiquantitative manner without special equipment and in a way that could easily be accomplished during a routine physical examination. Body condition scoring can be used to assess the health of individual animals as well as determine nutritional adequacy within groups of animals.

No abstract

Mutations in the human gene TCOF1 cause a mandibulofacial dysostosis known as Treacher Collins syndrome (TCS). An infant rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) that displayed the TCS phenotype was identified at the California National Primate Research Center. The TCOF1 coding region was cloned from a normal rhesus macaque and sequenced. The rhesus macaque homolog of TCOF1 is 91.6% identical in cDNA sequence and 93.8% identical in translated protein sequence compared to human TCOF1. Sequencing of TCOF1 in the TCS-affected rhesus macaque showed no mutations within the coding region or splice sites; however, real-time quantitative PCR showed an 87% reduction of spleen TCOF1 mRNA level in the TCS affected macaque when compared with normal macaque spleen.

No abstract

No abstract