Related Experiment Videos
The Lake Casitas wild mouse: evolving genetic resistance to retroviral disease
M B Gardner1, C A Kozak, S J O'Brien
1Department of Medical Pathology, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis 95616.
Trends in Genetics : TIG
|January 1, 1991
Abstract:
A small colony of feral mice from California continues to flourish in spite of a virulent epizootic of pathological retrovirus. Epidemiological and genetic studies revealed that the viral infection is strongly balanced by the polymorphic resistance locus, Fv-4, a transcriptionally active but truncated provirus that originated in the East Asian ancestors of the Californian mice. The natural history of these populations represents a graphic example of genomic adaptation in free-ranging populations to regulate and delimit infectious disease.