Studying the gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus), one of the world’s smallest primates, in its natural habitat and in the laboratory provides unique perspectives on primate brain evolution, cognition, aging and neurodegenerative diseases, on an accelerated timescale and at a substantially lower cost as compared with larger primate models.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the entire mouse lemur community for their contributions to understanding the species’ biology, conserving its natural habitats and developing modern research tools. We are grateful to A. Nourizonoz and J. Terrien for their comments on the manuscript, and to the staff of the Kirindy field station of the German Primate Center (Madagascar) and the mouse lemur research colony at the Musée national d’Histoire naturelle in Brunoy (France, UMR MECADEV CNRS/MNHN 7179) for their support. The authors are funded by the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Vahabzadeh Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (FI, 929/9-1, SPP 2205) and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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Fichtel, C., Huber, D. Mouse lemurs. Nat Methods 22, 1999–2001 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02852-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02852-7
