{"id":242426,"date":"2026-08-08T22:06:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T03:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/telomere-to-telomere-brown-rat-genome-could-sharpen-disease-research-models"},"modified":"2026-08-08T22:06:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T03:06:34","slug":"telomere-to-telomere-brown-rat-genome-could-sharpen-disease-research-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/telomere-to-telomere-brown-rat-genome-could-sharpen-disease-research-models","title":{"rendered":"Telomere-to-telomere brown rat genome could sharpen disease research models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/telomere-to-telomere-brown-rat-genome-could-sharpen-disease-research-models2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Researchers have created the most complete genetic profile of the brown rat to date, according to a UTHealth Houston-led team, paving the way for scientists to more accurately investigate genetic links to conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure and stroke.<\/p>\n<p>The research, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/cell-genomics\/fulltext\/S2666-979X(26)00143-6\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Cell Genomics<\/i><\/a>, was led by corresponding author Peter Doris, Ph.D., director of the Center for Human Genetics at The Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine within McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston.<\/p>\n<p>The assembly of the brown rat\u2019s genome provides a complete genetic fingerprint and reveals that the brown rat\u2019s DNA is more complex than scientists previously understood. In addition to uncovering more than 60 new genes, many of which were previously difficult to sequence and are thought to play a role in immunity and other biological processes, the team discovered that brown rat sex chromosomes differ significantly from those in humans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have created the most complete genetic profile of the brown rat to date, according to a UTHealth Houston-led team, paving the way for scientists to more accurately investigate genetic links to conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure and stroke. The research, published in Cell Genomics, was led by corresponding author Peter [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412,269,1901],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics","category-life-extension","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}