Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are housed at the Southwest National Primate Research
Center in San Antonio, Texas, where large pedigrees of
genotyped baboons represent a valuable research resource,
and at the Baboon Research Resource of the Oklahoma
University Health Science Center near Oklahoma City that
includes a specific pathogen free (SPF) colony. The
Mannheimer Foundation in Homestead, Florida, and the
Brookfeld Zoo in Chicago maintain colonies of P. hama-
dryas and P. papio, respectively.
Sooty Mangabeys
The last, and least popular, of the cercopithecoid primates
employed in biomedical research is the sooty mangabey
(Cercocebus atys atys). Its distribution, like that of captive
vervet colonies in the USA, is more restricted than that of
some of the macaque species described above, and genetic
subdivision, while not well studied, is not likely to be as
significant a factor in the suitability of different regional
populations as models for the same disease. The sooty
mangabey inhabits the tropical forests of Senegal, Guinea,
Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Its sister subspecies, C. a.
lunulatus (the white-napped Mangabey) that lives to the
east in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, might actually represent
a separate species (C. lunulatus) and is critically endan-
gered. The only viable captive colony of sooty mangabeys
in the world was established at the Yerkes National Primate
Research Center in 1968 and now numbers over 200
animals. The Tulane National Primate Research Center also
maintains a smaller colony of sooty mangabeys. As the
source of both SIVmac and HIV-2, sooty mangabeys are
naturally infected with SIV (
Ling et al., 2004; Silvestri,
2005
) and exhibit high levels of viremia, but exhibit no
clinical disease. For this reason, their immunological
comparison with highly susceptible species, like macaques
species that are not naturally infected with SIV, is of critical
importance.
African Green Monkeys
African green monkeys (genus Chlorocebus) are also
increasingly frequently used in biomedical research.
Chlorocebus monkeys, sometimes referred to as vervets,
are subdivided into five or six different species, although
some regard them, like baboons, as subspecies of a single
species, Chlorocebus aethiops, that exhibits one of the
broadest distributions of any African primate. It inhabits 39
different countries including the savanna grasslands of
eastern (and extending northward to Egypt and Eritrea),
central, and southern Africa. However, most vervets used in
biomedical research in the USA come from the islands of
St Kitts and Barbados in the Caribbean, where they were
inadvertently introduced during the seventeenth century.
These Caribbean vervets are members of the species
Chlorocebus sabaeus (or the subspecies C. aeithiops
sabaeus) that derives from western Africa where the
species range from Senegal to the Volta River. They are
relatively free of pathogens and readily available at lower
cost than rhesus, longtail macaques, or baboons. Colonies
of African green monkeys are maintained at the Tulane
National Primate Research Center, the New Iberia
Research Center in Louisianna, and the Wake Forest
University Primate Center in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina. Large colonies of African green monkeys are also
maintained at McGill University's St. Kitts Biomedical
Research Foundation, the Barbados Primate Research
Center, and the Caribbean Primate Research Laboratory of
Yale University. The colony at the Wake Forest University
Primate Center represents the nation's only pedigreed and
genotyped African green monkey colony, each member of
which has extensive phenotypic data available.
The ongoing sequencing of this species' genome and
pending availability of a genomewide SNP map, not yet
available for any other nonhuman primate, will provide the
opportunity for genome wide mapping of genes influential
in the onset of numerous human infectious and chronic
diseases. African green monkeys are particularly poten-
tially useful in research on susceptibility to SIV for which
they are a natural, uninfected host. Unfortunately, because
different breeding centers use different names and taxa to
refer to these monkeys, it is not clear how they, or their
origins, are related to one another.
New World Monkeys
Four Platyrrhine (NewWorld) primates have also been used
as animal models, the common marmoset (Callithrix jac-
chus), the cotton-top tamarin (Sanguinus oedipus), the owl
monkey (Aotus species), and the squirrel monkey (Saimiri
species). All four of these primate species are appealing to
biomedical research because of the reduced costs of their
purchase, ease of handling and breeding, and their shorter
generation span. Twinning of the marmoset is a unique
feature that suits some goals of biomedical research, and
the impending availability of a genome draft assembly for
this species is likely to increase its use in biomedical
research. However, the New World species are more
remotely related to humans and, therefore, less likely to
constitute optimal animal models for the study of many,
especially the infectious, human diseases. On the other
hand, they provide the models of choice in studies of
diseases whose species-specificity is low, such as bacterial
and parasitic infections (
Abee, 2000
).
The use of these New World species is severely limited
by their restricted availability through exportation from
their native habitats, and domestic supplies are largely
limited to animals bred domestically in captivity. The
Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and
Research of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer
