RAPID: Preserving a critical naked mole rat resource for future research

Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) are exceptionally long-lived mammals that exhibit unusual resistance to age-related diseases and live in highly organized social colonies. Their distinctive biology provides important opportunities to investigate aging, reproduction, metabolism, and the biological mechanisms underlying health and longevity. This project will establish the Naked Mole-Rat Organismal Resource and Archive (NORA) at Texas State University (TXST) to preserve the collection and its scientific value. Approximately 150 animals from two breeding colonies will be relocated to establish a sustainable living population. Historical records will be digitized, and tissues and biological information from animals that cannot be transferred will be preserved for future research. NORA will provide the scientific community with access to living animals, preserved specimens, and associated data while creating undergraduate training opportunities in biological collections, animal-resource management, and scientific data stewardship. This NSF RAPID project will preserve the Buffenstein naked mole-rat research population and its longitudinal scientific provenance through establishment of NORA at TXST. The pedigreed population encompasses approximately 1,200 animals representing diverse ages, reproductive states, and social classes, providing a rare resource for comparative investigations of exceptional longevity, eusociality, physiology, and stress resistance. Three objectives will guide the project: (1) transfer two established breeding colonies comprising approximately 150 animals from the University of Illinois Chicago to TXST; (2) digitize, curate, and quality-control historical pedigree, breeding, demographic, colony, and necropsy records; and (3) systematically collect and archive tissues, carcasses, and baseline physiological and molecular data from scientifically valuable animals that cannot be relocated. Time-sensitive sampling will preserve cellular, physiological, transcriptomic, and epigenomic phenotypes across age, and reproductive and social classes. Fresh-tissue analyses, including mitochondrial and immune measurements, will capture otherwise unrecoverable biological information. Integration of individual animal histories, pedigrees, biospecimens, and molecular datasets will establish a comprehensive resource for future mechanistic and comparative research. NORA will leverage infrastructure within TXST's Institute for Molecular Life Sciences to support long-term collection management, specimen access, and data dissemination. Curated records and foundational datasets will be shared through appropriate repositories, while undergraduate research and internships will provide training in biocollections, data curation, and animal-resource stewardship. The project will safeguard a scientifically irreplaceable resource and sustain its contributions to biomedical and comparative biology. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.