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External genitalia are the reproductive organs necessary for efficient copulation and internal fertilization in various mammalian species. Their morphogeneses display significant morphological and developmental differences among species. The house musk shrew, Suncus murinus (hereafter described as suncus) is a species of the order Insectivora, which has been considered as primitive and one of the earliest eutheria phylogenetically. Comparative anatomical analyses of phylogenetically different mammals will contribute to the better understanding of morphological diversity of external genitalia. This study performed various anatomical and histological analyses concerning the organization of the external genitalia of male suncus. It was shown that the external genitalia of suncus possessed a muscular structure, which we proposed as musculus ischiocavernosus dorsalis of suncus. The musculus ischiocavernosus dorsalis is originated from the inner surface of the tuber ischiadicum and was allocated adjacent to the corpus cavernosum penis. In addition, a pair of alpha-smooth muscle actin positive muscles was located bilaterally to the urethra. This unique morphology of the external genitalia of suncus males may provide a unique model system to investigate genital morphogenesis.

A detailed analysis was done on the karyotypes of four species of mole in the genera Euroscaptor and Mogera using a G-banding technique. All four species examined had a chromosome number of 2n = 36, as reported previously. Euroscaptor mizura and M. wogura from Aichi Prefecture had almost the same chromosome constitution and G-banding patterns. These common karyotypes were considered to be equivalent to the hypothetical ancestral karyotype of Mogera, since two distinct genera derived from an ancestor share G-banding homologies. According to this hypothesis, the karyotype of M. imaizumii might have been derived from the ancestral karyotype through pericentric inversion in one pair of acrocentrics, chromosome 11. Two geographically isolated populations of M. tokudae had different karyotypes: the Echigo population had the same karyotype as M. imaizumii, whereas the Sado population had a derivative karyotype that was able to be explained by pericentric inversions in three pairs of acrocentrics, remain...

Phylogenetic relationships among the East Asian species of the genus Crocidura (Mammalia, Insectivora, Soricidae) were inferred from the partial sequences (402 base pairs) of the mitochondrial cyto-chrome b gene. Six species of Crocidura and one representative of another insectivoran genus Suncus were examined. In the neighbor joining tree, four distinct lineages were recognized: C. lasiura from northeastern China and Korea, and C. dsinezumi from the main-islands of Japan; C. attenuata from Taiwan; C. watasei from the Amami and Okinawa Groups, and S. murinus from the Miyako Group; and C. suaveolens from Tsushima and Taiwan, and C. sibirica from Central Asia in Russian territory. All these lineages excluding C. lasiura and C. dsinezumi were also recognized by the maximum parsimony analysis. Clustering of C. watasei with S. murinus suggested the non-monophyly of the genus Crocidura as of the present definition. Biogeo-graphical implications of the present results were also discussed.

The house musk shrew (Suncus murinus), or suncus, is a unique experimental animal. We recently showed that this mammal is cold intolerant and hypothesized that its sensitivity to cold is caused by low thermogenic activity in brown adipose tissue (BAT). Thermogenesis in BAT is performed by a unique mitochondrial protein, uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1). Interestingly, only eutherians possess UCP1, and some traits in the suncus resemble those in the Ucp1-ablated mouse, including cold intolerance, histology of BAT, and obesity resistance. In a previous study, we hypothesized that UCP1 may not be present in BAT of the suncus or may be dysfunctional. Therefore, we performed cDNA cloning of suncus Ucp1 and compared it to homologs from other species. The deduced amino acid sequence showed high similarity to other mammalian UCP1. Northern blot analysis revealed mRNA in BAT, as in other mammals. However, a difference in an amino acid residue was observed in an important residue for thermogenesis. Genomic sequence analysis showed that this difference existed in our two genetically distant laboratory colonies. These results suggest that cold intolerance in the suncus is derived from low thermogenic activity of UCP1 and may exist in wild house musk shrews.