Molecular basis of albinism in the rhesus monkey
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Updated: Oct 17, 2026

Gene Editing of Primary Rhesus Macaque B Cells
Published on: February 10, 2023
1Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Sequence analysis of the tyrosinase (TYR) coding region from one albino rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) family revealed that the two monkeys with phenotype similar to human TYR-negative oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) were homozygous for a missense mutation (S184TER) in exon 1 at codon 184. The offspring of one of the albino monkey ("Kangkang") are all heterozygous for the S184TER mutation, but the S184TER mutation was not observed in 93 control individuals. We conclude that the point mutation is responsible and sufficient to generate the albino rhesus monkey phenotype. The rough age of the S184TER nonsense mutation may be about 0.8 million years using a rate of 0.16% per million years.
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