Individual recognition in mice mediated by major urinary proteins

Jane L. Hurst (), Caroline E. Payne, Charlotte M. Nevison, Amr D. Marie, Richard E. Humphries, Duncan H. L. Robertson, Andrea Cavaggioni and Robert J. Beynon
Additional contact information
Jane L. Hurst: University of Liverpool
Caroline E. Payne: University of Liverpool
Charlotte M. Nevison: University of Liverpool
Amr D. Marie: University of Liverpool
Richard E. Humphries: University of Liverpool
Duncan H. L. Robertson: University of Liverpool
Andrea Cavaggioni: Università di Padova
Robert J. Beynon: University of Liverpool

Nature, 2001, vol. 414, issue 6864, 631-634

Abstract: Abstract The ability to recognize individuals is essential to many aspects of social behaviour, such as the maintenance of stable social groups, parent–offspring or mate recognition, inbreeding avoidance and the modulation of competitive relationships. Odours are a primary mediator of individuality signals among many mammals1. One source of odour complexity in rodents, and possibly in humans, resides in the highly polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC)2. The olfactory acuity of mice3 and rats4 allows them to distinguish between the urinary odours of congenic strains differing only in single genes within the MHC, although the chemical mediators or odorants are unknown. However, rodent urine also contains a class of proteins, termed major urinary proteins (MUPs)5, that bind and release small volatile pheromones6,7. We have shown that the combinatorial diversity of expression of MUPs among wild mice might be as great as for MHC, and at protein concentrations a million times higher8. Here we show in wild house mice (Mus domesticus) that urinary MUPs play an important role in the individual recognition mechanism.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/414631a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:414:y:2001:i:6864:d:10.1038_414631a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/414631a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().