Beyond the Mouse: The Mouse Lemur as a New Primate Model for Cardiovascular Research

Due to differences in cardiac structure and function, it has become increasingly clear that many aspects of cardiovascular anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and disease are not well modeled in mice. This has spurred a search for new model organisms with the practical advantages of mice but that more closely mimic human biology and disease.

Until recently, little was known of lemur cardiovascular physiology, cell types, or pathology. In a recent trinity of papers, we established the mouse lemur (Microcebus spp.) - the world's smallest, most prolific, and among the most abundant non-human primates - and the cheapest and easiest to maintain, as a new tractable genetic model organism. In one of these studies, we conducted the first systematic phenotypic screen and classical genetic mapping in a non-human primate, leading to the identification and characterization of human-like cardiac arrhythmias. We successfully genetically mapped one familial lemur arrhythmia to a novel disease gene. In the other two studies, we built and applied a transcriptomic cell atlas for the mouse lemur, profiling 226,000 cells across 27 organs. This included the transcriptomic profiles of over 4000 cardiac cells, identifying 15 heart cell types that included several rare heart cell types. We documented the first null mutations in lemur, including nonsense mutations in three primate genes absent in mice, and exploited the atlas to reveal their transcriptional phenotypes, demonstrating the potential of the model organism along with synergy with the atlas. To propel these advances, we recently generated a new near telomere-to-telomere (T2T), phased diploid genome assembly for the mouse lemur, using a combination of short-, long-, and ultralong-read sequencing technologies - providing a foundational genomic resource to enhance gene and mutation discovery, functional genomics, and the applicability of cell atlas data in this new primate model. This review examines the mouse lemur (Microcebus species) as a new tractable genetic model organism for investigating primate-specific cardiovascular function and disease. Recent studies from our lab have laid a robust cellular, molecular, and genomic foundation for this model, including the first systematic phenotypic screens and classical genetic mapping in a non-human primate, showing that both forward and reverse genetic approaches are now feasible in lemurs. Collectively, these advances present a compelling case for the mouse lemur as a valuable and practical model organism for primate biomedical research.