A mouse (plural mice ) is a rodent that belongs to one of numerous species of small mammals. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse ( Mus musculus ). It is found in nearly all countries and, like the laboratory mouse, serves as an important model organism in biology, and is also a popular pet. The American white-footed mouse ( Peromyscus leucopus ) and the deer mouse ( Peromyscus maniculatus ) also sometimes live in houses. These species of mice live commensally with humans.

Although they may live up to two years in the lab, the average mouse in the wild lives only about 5 months, primarily due to heavy predation. Cats, wild dogs, foxes, birds of prey, snakes and even certain kinds of insects have been known to prey heavily upon mice. Nevertheless, due to its remarkable adaptability to almost any environment, and its ability to live commensally with humans, the mouse is regarded to be the third most successful mammalian species living on Earth today, after humans and the rat.

Mice can be harmful pests, damaging and eating crops and spreading diseases through their parasites and feces. In the Western United States , breathing dust that has come in contact with mouse feces has been linked to the deadly hantavirus. The original motivation for the domestication of cats is thought to have been for their predation of mice and their relatives, the rats.

Mouse-like species are among the oldest mammals. It has been proposed that higher mammals evolved from rodent-like species many millions of years ago.Mice have been known to humans since antiquity. The Romans differentiated poorly between mice and rats, calling rats Mus Maximus (big mouse) and referring to mice as Mus Minimus (little mouse). In Spanish similar term are in use: ratón for mouse and rata for rat.

Discoloration in mice was supposedly first noticed in China by 1100 BC, where a white mouse was discovered. However, there is sufficient evidence to believe that white mice were first noticed before that, in the times of the Greeks and Ancient Rome.

Role of P53 gene in Mus musculus

The tumor suppressor prote in p53 is specifically expressed during meiosis in spermatocytes. Subsets of p53 knockout mice exhibit testicular giant cell degenerative syndrome, which suggests p53 may be associated with meiotic cell cycle and/or DNA metabolism. Here, we show that p53 b in ds to the mouse meiosis-specific RecA-like prote in Mus musculus DMC1 (MmDMC1). The C-terminal domain (amino acid 234–340) of MmDMC1 binds to DNA- binding domain of p53 protein . p53 might be involved in homologous recombination and/or checkpoint function by directly binding to DMC1 protein to repress genomic in stability in meiotic germ cells.

Location of p53 gene in Mus musculus chromosome