Morphological and Transcriptomic Analyses of the Adrenal Gland in : A Novel Model for Murine Adrenal Physiology.

This study investigates the adrenal gland structure and gene expression in compared to , aiming to assess its relevance for human adrenal disease modeling. We identified a well-defined zona reticularis in , resembling the human adrenal cortex. Transcriptomic analysis revealed upregulation of key steroidogenic genes (C, , , , , ), with validation by qRT-PCR and CAGE-seq. The gene showed discordant results between RNA-seq and CAGE. Pathway analysis highlighted enrichment of steroidogenesis and adrenal metabolism. Notably, a GTEx-based comparison demonstrated that adrenal gene expression closely mirrors the expression in the human adrenal cortex, whereas samples diverged toward brain-specific signatures. These findings suggest that represents a promising model for adrenal research, though further studies including single-cell transcriptomics and functional assays are warranted to fully establish its translational potential.