Conserv Genet https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-018-1072-9 (2018).

With its standardized phenotyping pipeline, the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) wants to characterize every protein-coding murine gene. By identifying genetic sequences that are shared between the lab mouse and other species, researchers can gain a better idea of a given gene’s role in animals that are more challenging to systematically study, like people. But people aren’t the only possible beneficiaries of the consortium’s efforts: knowledge from the mouse might just help wildlife too.

A recent pilot study, led by Violeta Muñoz-Fuentes at the European Bioinformatics Institute, linked mouse data from the IMPC to three subspecies of gorilla in an attempt to identify candidate genes that could impact viability in the great apes. The authors reason that such catalogues could help captive breeding programs arrange beneficial breeding pairs and avoid deleterious ones.