ABSTRACT
In 1924, Brooke obtained a pair of pink, smooth-skinned hairless mice from a man in North London, UK Mice were found near Maidenhead, England that people in the neighborhood called “rhinoceros mice” because they lacked hair and had a very wrinkled or “corrugated” skin. New mutations continue to arise spontaneously that have gross and histologic features similar to the hairless and rhino mutations. The utriculi develop in hairless homozygous mice; however, they are much smaller. The susceptibility of hairless mice on some genetic backgrounds to ultraviolet light-induced squamous cell carcinoma led to the speculation that a papillomavirus might exist in some strains as an endogenous cocarcinogen. Hairless mice express selective defects in T-cell functions, notably in T-helper cells and in macrophages. Hairless mice are smooth-skinned throughout life (with minor exceptions), compared to rhinos that develop prominent wrinkles. The rhino mutation has been used extensively to test efficacy of compounds that modulate the peculiar skin of this mouse.
