Monkey SNPs

Genetics and genomics was the topic of most talks today, the last day of the conference. Jessica Satkoski Trask from the University of California, Davis said in her talk that when it comes to the availability of genetic tools, nonhuman primates (NHPs) have a long way to go compared with mice or fruit flies. “If you want a knock out mouse, you call the knock out mouse store and they send you the mice,” she said, referring to mice that have a gene knocked out. In contrast, “rhesus macaques and primates are not set up as a genetic model yet. There is going to be a need for a more and more diverse set of genetic tools.” 

One such tool is called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These are variations in the genetic code that geneticists use to find candidate genes for genetic traits. This could be important to identify, for example, the genetic factors that are the basis for different responses of Chinese and Indian rhesus macaques to infection with SIV. 

However, Satkoski Trask said, just over 700 SNPs are known for Chinese and Indian rhesus macaques, while over 14 million are known for mice. Now Satkoski Trask and colleagues have identified more than 4,000 additional SNPs in Indian and Chinese rhesus macaques, and made a map of where those SNPs are located on the chromosomes. They used this information to identify a set of candidate genes that could account for differences between Chinese and Indian rhesus macaques. “There has never been a SNP based linkage map for rhesus,” she said, “and to my knowledge, this is the first study that looked at candidate genes identified through genome wide analysis.” 

Asked if he thought the conference was a success, conference co-chair Ronald Veazey said that he thought the meeting was scientifically stronger than in the past, in part because it now attracts a wider array of scientists, and because researchers who study HIV are taking NHP research seriously today. This is very different from the 1990s, he added. “Back in the 1990s, the HIV people didn’t pay attention to us,” Veazey said. “It was just us monkey people [at the meeting]. People working on HIV said the rhesus model is totally irrelevant.” 

The 29th meeting next year will take place in Seattle, hosted by the University of Washington and the Washington National Primate Research Center (WNPRC). When announcing that meeting, Shiu-Lok Hu of the WNPRC made one very important point: “It does not rain in Seattle.”