Rodents are mammals of the order Rodentia, characterized primarily by a single pair of ever-growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws, separated from the cheek teeth by a diastema and adapted for gnawing. This order encompasses extensive taxonomic diversity, including families such as Muridae, Cricetidae, Sciuridae, and Caviidae, occupying a wide range of terrestrial and arboreal habitats. Rodents exhibit high reproductive rates, diverse dietary strategies (from herbivory to omnivory), and complex social structures in some lineages. They play key ecological roles as primary consumers, seed predators and dispersers, and prey species, and serve as important model organisms in biomedical and evolutionary research.
A new advance in animal husbandry involving a popular aquarium fish should speed the pace of discovery in laboratory studies of host-microbe interactions, researchers report. The new findings by researchers from the University ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 1, 2026
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A team of researchers led by Luigi Naldini at the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-Tiget) has developed a new strategy to significantly improve the precision and safety of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in human ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 1, 2026
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A 2021 outbreak of leptospirosis that sickened more than 200 dogs in Los Angeles County reveals critical gaps in vaccination practices and raises broader concerns about the spread of the disease between animals and people, ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 26, 2026
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The outer regions of the brain, the cortex, have specific layers of different cells—neurons—that are similarly ordered among all mammals, from tiny mouse brains to huge elephant brains. However, the proportions of different ...
Evolution
May 26, 2026
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The removal of invasive rodents from Lord Howe Island has triggered a rebound of invertebrate life, with researchers from the University of Sydney and collaborators documenting sharp increases in the abundance of insects ...
Plants & Animals
May 25, 2026
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In a cramped, windowless room on the University of California, Berkeley, campus, two bespoke microscopes—each a Swiss Army knife for high-resolution imaging—operate around the clock gathering data that will help train a game-changing ...
Biotechnology
May 22, 2026
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Scientists have reported it for decades: overpopulation can impair reproduction. Crowded chickens lay fewer eggs. Crowded mice have smaller broods. In humans, several studies have associated increased population density with ...
Evolution
May 21, 2026
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Scientists have long known that the DNA code in genes is not the only way to pass genetic traits from parents to offspring. "Epigenetic" marks—chemical modifications to DNA that don't change the DNA code itself—can also be ...
Molecular & Computational biology
May 20, 2026
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Argentine scientists on Tuesday began collecting rodents in the woods around Ushuaia to search for carriers of hantavirus in the area from which the virus-stricken MV Hondius set sail.
Ecology
May 20, 2026
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Researchers at Bar-Ilan University have successfully restored youthful patterns of DNA organization in the livers of old mice, reversing key molecular features associated with aging. The study, published in Nature Communications, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
May 19, 2026
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