Mus musculus

Mus musculus is the scientific name for a mouse. Mus musculus are commonly used as model organisms in research labs, as compared to other model organisms the mouse is the closest relative to humans and therefore opens many possibilities to studying things such as human diseases .

The Mus musculus genome was sequenced in 2002 and it was found that many of their genes have a human counterpart, which can be experimented with, creating mutations in mice which mirror human diseases  Mice have also been used often in research to create 'transgenic mouse' by inserting foreign DNA into mouse embryo's.