This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the first draft of the human genome and its broad availability to the scientific community. In parallel, the annotation of the mouse genome led to the identification and analysis of countless genes by means of genetic manipulation. Today, when comparing both genomes, it might surprise that some genes are still seeking their respective homologs in either species. In this review, we aim at raising awareness for the remarkable differences between the researcher’s favorite rodents, i.e., mice and rats, when it comes to the generation of rodent research models regarding genes with a particular delicate localization, namely the pseudoautosomal region on both sex chromosomes. Many of these genes are of utmost clinical relevance in humans and still miss a rodent disease model giving their absence in mice and rats or low sequence similarity compared to humans. The abundance of rodents within mammals prompted us to investigate different branches of rodents leading us to the re-discovery of the guinea pig as a mammalian research model for a distinct group of genes.

今年是人类基因组初稿发表及其广泛提供给科学界二十周年。与此同时，小鼠基因组的注释导致通过基因操作对无数基因进行识别和分析。今天，当比较两个基因组时，有些基因仍在任一物种中寻找它们各自的同源物可能会令人惊讶。在这篇综述中，我们的目标是提高对研究人员最喜欢的啮齿动物（即小鼠和大鼠）之间显着差异的认识，当涉及到具有特定精细定位的基因的啮齿动物研究模型的生成时，即两性的假常染色体区域染色体。许多这些基因在人类中具有最大的临床相关性，并且仍然错过了啮齿动物疾病模型，因为它们在小鼠和大鼠中不存在或与人类相比序列相似性低。哺乳动物体内啮齿动物的数量众多，促使我们研究啮齿动物的不同分支，从而重新发现豚鼠作为一组不同基因的哺乳动物研究模型。