Hairless Rat From Kim Possible

STEM Jobs crowned Rufus "one of the most faithful, yet smallest sidekicks of all time." Rufus has been called the most famous naked mole-rat in the world. Kristy Pirone of Screen Rant believes Rufus "will live in perpetuity as the most famous naked mole-rat of all time." Massive Science credits Rufus and Kim Possible with introducing naked mole-rats into mainstream popular culture. The Liberty Science Center observed that most people may "only know about naked mole rats via cartoon characters", such as Rufus.

The Field Museum of Natural History wrote that "Rufus stole the hearts of all who watched him save the day. In many episodes, Rufus is the hero, and like Kim and Ron, scientists agree that naked mole-rats are pretty cool." These rodents live in large communities led by a queen, whose main purpose is to give birth and raise young. Blind naked mole rats use their sensitive hairs to navigate underground passageways. The Iffa Credo "hairless" rat is an autosomal recessive hypotrichotic animal model actively used in pharmacological and dermatological studies.

Although the molecular basis of the IC rat phenotype was never defined, the designation "hr/hr" has been used for this rat mutation. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the skin phenotype in the IC rat. This results in significant reduction of hair bulb volume, and the formation of dysmorphic "blebbed" hair shafts lacking medullar structure and resembling "lanceolate" hairs. Based on the presence of lance-head hairs typical of rodent lanceolate mutants, we performed molecular analysis of the desmoglein 4 gene and found a large intragenic deletion encompassing nine exons of the gene. This finding, together with specific morphological features of skin and hairs, confirms that the IC rat is allelic with the lanceolate hair mutations in mice and rats.

Our results elucidate the genetic and morphological basis of the IC rat mutation, thus providing a new model to study molecular mechanisms of hair growth control. The analysis of the naked mole-rat genome sequence has undoubtedly shed light on a number of genetic characteristics that might relate to its numerous peculiar physiological adaptations (Kim et al. 2011). Among the major insights was the finding that a single amino acid substitution was responsible for its unique hairless phenotype.

Indeed, as its name implies, the naked mole-rat is the only wild rodent species that naturally lacks fur. The authors have linked this hairlessness to the presence of a single amino acid substitution in the nuclear receptor corepressor hair growth associated protein, also called Hairless. The HR gene is present as a single-copy ortholog in most currently available mammalian genomes with potential paralogs being only found in the gibbon genome . The molecular evidence for such a conclusion takes the form of a multiple amino acid sequence alignment corresponding to exon 2 of the HR gene in rodents presented as supplementary figure S24C of Kim et al. .

If they don't have oxygen, they survive by just turning into plants, NBD. However, and this cannot be stated enough, naked mole rats cannot survive as pets. If someone tries to keep a naked mole rat as a pet like Ron, that naked mole rat will pass away. And it will be your fault for not googling naked mole rats before buying them on the black market. SourceRufus is a naked mole rat, the pet friend and soul brother of Ron Stoppable, and the tritagonist of the Kim Possible franchise.

Rufus lives almost full-time in Ron's pants pocket and accompanies him everywhere. For an animal, he is exceptionally intelligent, but average by human standards, and is capable of vocalizations approximating limited speech. It is unclear if his "speech" is actual or a case of "audience filter" and not understandable to anyone other than Ron himself. Naked mole rats are found in Eastern Africa and are thelongest living rodents on record, reaching about 30 years of age. In comparison, the average life span of a mouse is less than a year in the wild and up to two years in captivity. These fascinating animals live underground in a system of tunnels and are hairless, which explains the "naked" part of their name.

Another award-winning characteristic of naked mole rats is their resistance to cancer, which could lead to new cancer treatments for humans with more study. In, despite being with the time-lost Kim and Ron, Rufus had a sizable number of progeny, strongly implying that he has already procreated, or a lesser-assumed idea being that he was cloned, explaining the future Rufus descendants' worship of him. They refer to him as Rufus Prime, although, given the social nature of mole rat society, it may not be so surprising after all. In the above movie, Rufus is asked by his descendants on what the meaning of life is, and Rufus replies, 'Cheese,' which prompts one Rufus to tell the other, 'You owe me a buck.' .

According to the show's creators, Rufus' name is an ironic pun on the name of the naked mole rat's natural enemy, the. Rufus has Mystical Monkey Powers that he received in ' because he was presumably in Ron's pants pocket when Ron became endowed with these powers, and Rufus was imbued with his own at that time. Disney Channel being, well, the Disney Channel gave the series' creators a note that there had to be some type of animal sidekick on the show. Already annoyed with network edits, the show-runners decided to make Rufus a naked mole rat to get back at executives by giving the show a concrete reason to say "naked" multiple times an episode on a children's show.

Now, Rufus will live in perpetuity as the most famous naked mole rat of all time. Confirmed the accusation false when he sensed Rufus wasn't his 'cousin'.Rufus appears in the live-action film with reprising her role. Taking place before the animated series, Ron first meets Rufus in a science lab where he is in a terrarium for Naked Mole-Rats and adopts him as his pet. Even though it seems to be a one-sided love, at the end credits of the episode ', Rufus and Debutante are both seen dining at a fancy restaurant, but Rufus seemed a little uneasy about it. More than 25 different hypotrichotic mutations have been described in laboratory rats, yet the molecular basis for these mutations has not been determined for most of these phenotypes. Their similarity to the hairless mutations described in mice suggests a possible role for the hairless gene in the formation of rat hypotrichotic phenotypes, though whether hr is responsible for these rat phenotypes has yet to be determined.

Therefore, in order to understand the basis for the rat hypotrichotic phenotypes and their relationship to the hr gene, we determined the genomic organization of the hr gene and subsequently analyzed the coding sequence in four hypotrichotic rat strains. Analysis revealed that the first two exons of the mouse, monkey, and human hr gene were fused in the rat gene, while the rest of the gene showed strong evolutionary conservation. Despite their designation as "hairless," no mutations within the coding sequences were identified, indicating that the "hairless" phenotype in all four hypotrichotic rat strains are not allelic with hr.

CAP1/Prss8 is a membrane-bound serine protease involved in the regulation of several different effectors, such as the epithelial sodium channel ENaC, the protease-activated receptor PAR2, the tight junction proteins, and the profilaggrin polypeptide. Recently, the V170D and the G54-P57 deletion mutations within the CAP1/Prss8 gene, identified in mouse frizzy and rat hairless (fr) animals, respectively, have been proposed to be responsible for their skin phenotypes. In the present study, we analyzed those mutations, revealing a change in the protein structure, a modification of the glycosylation state, and an overall reduction in the activation of ENaC of the two mutant proteins. Hairless rats additionally had dehydration defects in skin and intestine and significant reduction in the body weight. In conclusion, we provided molecular and functional evidence that CAP1/Prss8 mutations are accountable for the defects in fr and fr animals, and we furthermore demonstrate a decreased function of the CAP1/Prss8 mutant proteins.

Therefore, fr and fr animals are suitable models to investigate the consequences of CAP1/Prss8 action on its target proteins in the whole organism. Recent evidence has indicated that the recessive mutation affecting hypotrichosis in the Charles River "hairless" rat does not involve the hairless gene on rat chromosome 15. Analysis of this panel has located the CR hairless rat's hypotrichosis-generating mutation on chromosome 1, near Myl2, where only the fuzzy mutation in rat and the frizzy mutation in mouse have been previously localized. Intercrossing fz/fz and CR hairless rats produced hybrid offspring with abnormal hair, showing that these two rat mutations are allelic. We suggest that the CR hairless rat mutation and fuzzy be renamed frizzy-Charles River (fr) and frizzy-Harlan (fr), respectively, to reflect their likely orthology with the mouse fr mutation.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean naked mole rats hold the key to immortality. "I hate to burst the bubble," says Stan Braude, a professor of practice in the biology department at Washington University in St. Louis. That's consistent with the longevity that the Calico study found in its lab population. The overall rate of survival in the lab was obviously much higher, however, since natural factors were removed.

The CGI naked mole rat will be voiced by Nancy Cartwright, the actor who voiced the character in the original cartoon series. Winning this title takes more than good looks, even though the researchers closest to the naked mole rat claim they are "very cute" animals. I guess their appeal must be strong since Rufus, the naked mole rat, is a regular in Disney'sKim Possible. As if saving the world from evil wasn't a good enough reason to win this esteemed recognition, these little critters have a few surprising traits that helped them earn the top spot for 2013. Inbred laboratory mice have proven to be useful model systems for studying hair biology and pathomechanisms of hair loss.

Fuzzy is an autosomal recessive mutation that results in hair coat abnormalities. Though this mutant has long been known, its cutaneous abnormalities still await systematic analysis. Here, we provide a systematic skin phenotype analysis of mice that are homozygous for Iasi congenital atrichia (fzica/fzica), which is allelic to fz. Homozygous mice exhibit a sparse hair coat after birth and completely loose their hair at around postnatal day 120. Although early and mid stages of hair follicle morphogenesis are normal, late hair follicle morphogenesis reveals multifocal cell degeneration within the Huxley layer of the inner root sheath and a complete lack of the hair shaft medulla. In addition, hair follicle development is prematurely terminated by induction of the first postnatal hair cycle with premature entry into catagen.

Subsequently, a dramatically shortened telogen is immediately followed by premature anagen development, resulting in a marked, generalized acceleration of hair follicle cycling. This suggests that fuzzy is not only involved in structural hair shaft integrity and differentiation of the IRS and medulla, but also plays an important role in the control of hair follicle cycling. Our data show that fuzzy is involved in controlling both catagen and anagen initiation, designating fuzzy an exciting target for characterizing the intracutaneous oscillator system that drives hair follicle cycling. The Disney Channel original series explored the young teenage spy/hero Kim Possible. Along with her best friend Ron Stoppable, her friend and tech adviser Wade and the mole rat Rufus, Kim traveled the world fighting villains and stopping threats of world-ending levels.

She did all this while balancing a high school life, from cheerleading to graduation and more. Hailing from a super smart family filled with doctors and geniuses, she used her natural born talents to protect the innocent and become the teenage and female icon she has become to young women all around the world. However, despite how amazing her character was and the powerful social movements her show created for an entire generation, not even Kim Possible herself is without faults or hidden secrets.

Hairless mutant mice first appeared in the literature in the 1930's when they were described as having a striking wave of hair loss that occurs in a rostral to caudal manner starting at 3 weeks of age , , , . Some fifty years later, Hr mutant mice were widely adopted as a convenient model for skin carcinogenesis studies and were discovered to be uniquely susceptible to both UV induced and chemical carcinogenesis , , . Since then, the molecular basis of the Hairless phenotype has been established as either a proviral insertion into exon 6, as in the case of Hrhr and SKH-1 animals , , or point mutations, as is the case of the Hrrh animals , , . Despite the knowledge that these strains have a mutated Hr gene, many carcinogenesis studies continue to use them and refer to unirradiated/untreated animals as 'wild-type hairless' mice. As a group, non-melanoma skin cancers are the most common type of cancer in the US with a combined incidence of over 2 million new cases annually . Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common form of NMSC and is the most likely type to lethally metastasize, which makes understanding SCC development crucially important to human health .

Current research strategies utilize mice strains that lack hair to model carcinogenesis using either UV irradiation or chemical carcinogenesis since researchers prefer not to perform repeated shaving or depilation to visualize tumor development. Particularly favored strains feature mutations in the Hairless gene that result in almost complete hair loss early in life . Browse 41 mole rat stock photos and images available, or search for naked mole rat to find more great stock photos and pictures. Naked mole rats had their fifteen minutes of fame when one was featured as Rufus, a beloved pet in Disney's cartoon series, Kim Possible. Since then, this wrinkly, hairless creature hasn't spent much time in the spotlight, aside from topping a number of "ugliest animal" lists like these.

A very large and expensive diamond has been stolen, and Kim and Ron go to retrieve it. The suspect is Falsetto Jones, who is suspect in other crimes but has so far eluded prosecution. To sneak onto his island lair, Kim and Ron enter his open dog show, borrowing Kim's French friend Francois's prize-winning poodle.

However, Ron feeds the poodle lots of Bueno Nacho food, and she's in no condition to compete. While Ron and Rufus attend the dog show, Kim sneaks into Jones's lair and retrieves the diamond. Unfortunately, Rufus does well in the show, and arouses Falsetto Jones's suspicion.

He catches Kim, Ron, and Rufus, and puts Rufus in a dog kennel with his wolfhounds and Kim and Ron over a pool of electric eels. (Contrary to tradition, he stays to watch their demise.) But Rufus escapes, frees Kim and Ron, and they all escape (via a parachute/dress) to an awaiting boat. Rufus has Mystical Monkey Powers that he received in "Monkey Fist Strikes" because he was presumably in Ron's pants pocket when Ron became endowed with these powers, and Rufus was imbued with his own at that time.

If he has some level of control over them, it may explain why he can hold his own in a fight and bite through things that a naked mole rat would normally be unable to bite through. However, in A Sitch in Time, he does so even before he gets these powers. Eric, Dr. Drakken's synthodrone meant to charm Kim and drive a wedge between her and Ron, became one of Rufus' greatest enemies. While at first Rufus seemed to like him, when he called naked mole rat cool, he began to despise him, when he and Kim grew close. After his true colors were revealed, he openly declared that naked mole rat is gross.

In the episode Overdue when he and Ron go to Drakken's lair to find Kim's overdue library book, Drakken calls Rufus "The Weasle Thing" instead of a naked mole rat. To address this issue, we show for the first time that Hr−/− and SKH-1 mouse lines are allelic mutants of one another that have significantly lower amounts of Hr, a crucial early UVB response gene, and are thus predisposed to UVB induced carcinogenesis. Thomas Park, professor of biology, holds a naked mole rat at his research laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, December 9, 2009. However, in A Sitch in Time, he does so even before he gets these powers.See also.

We have previously shown that the rat fuzzy and Charles River 'hairless' mutations are defects in the same gene on rat Chr 1, and are likely orthologues of the frizzy mutation on mouse Chr 7. To test the hypothesis that these variants could result from defects in Fgfr2, we crossed fr/fr mice (from the inbred FS/EiJ strain) with mice that carry a recessive lethal mutation in Fgfr2. Mice inheriting both mutations were phenotypically normal, indicating that fr is not an allele of Fgfr2. To genetically map fr, we crossed these hybrid mice, or F mice made by crossing FS/EiJ with the wild-type C57BL/6J or BALB/cBy strains, back to the FS/EiJ strain. The resulting 546 backcross progeny were typed for linked markers to position fr centromeric of Fgfr2, between D7Csu5 and D7Mit165; an interval that contains only 2.7 Mb and fewer than 70 genes. Further characterization of regional recombinants for sequence-level polymorphisms should allow sufficient refinement of fr's location to facilitate an eventual molecular assignment for this classical mutation.

The laboratory rat has been used for a long time as the model of choice in several biomedical disciplines. Numerous inbred strains have been isolated, displaying a wide range of phenotypes and providing many models of human traits and diseases. Rat genome mapping and genomics was considerably developed in the last decades. The availability of these resources has stimulated numerous studies aimed at discovering causal disease genes by positional identification. Several genome-editing methods were introduced to generate targeted mutations in genes the function of which could be clarified in this manner . Furthermore, even when the human gene causing a disease had been identified without resorting to a rat model, mutated rat strains were created to analyze the gene function and the disease pathogenesis.

Today, over 350 rat genes have been identified as underlying diseases or playing a key role in critical biological processes that are altered in diseases, thereby providing a rich resource of disease models. This article is an update of the progress made in this research and provides the reader with an inventory of these disease genes, a significant number of which have similar effects in rat and humans. The creepy, hairless critter (which was famously featured as an anthropomorphic, nacho-loving side kick in the cartoon Kim Possible) has an unusually long life span, and a host of characteristics that make it seem relatively invincible. Naked mole rats don't appear to feel pain the way most mammals do, and only a few individuals out of the hundreds studied are known to have developed cancer. They can also hold their breath for 18 minutes at a time with no apparent side effects whatsoever. The naked mole-rat is the only rodent species that naturally lacks fur.

Genome sequencing of this atypical rodent species recently shed light on a number of its morphological and physiological adaptations. More specifically, its hairless phenotype has been traced back to a single amino acid change in the hair growth associated protein . By considering the available species diversity, we show that this specific position is in fact variable across mammals, including in the horse that was misleadingly reported to have the ancestral Cysteine. Moreover, by sequencing the corresponding HR exon in additional rodent species, we demonstrate that the C397W substitution is actually not a peculiarity of the naked mole-rat.

Instead, this specific amino acid substitution is present in all hystricognath rodents investigated, which are all fully furred, including the naked mole-rat closest relative, the Damaraland mole-rat . Overall, we found no statistical correlation between amino acid changes at position 397 of the HR protein and reduced pilosity across the mammalian phylogeny. This demonstrates that this single amino acid change does not explain the naked mole-rat hairless phenotype. Our case study calls for caution before making strong claims regarding the molecular basis of phenotypic adaptation based on the screening of specific amino acid substitutions using only few model species in genome sequence comparisons. It also exposes the more general problem of the dilution of essential information in the supplementary material of genome papers thereby increasing the probability that misleading results will escape the scrutiny of editors, reviewers, and ultimately readers. According to the show's creators, Rufus' name is an ironic pun on the name of the naked mole rat's natural enemy, the Rufous beaked snake.