Arunachal macaque Arunachal macaque The Arunachal macaque ("Macaca munzala"), a relatively large brown primate with a comparatively short tail, is a macaque native to Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. Its species name comes from "munzala" ("monkey of the deep forest") as it was called by the Dirang Monpa tribe. It was discovered as a new taxon in 1997 by the noted Indian primatologist Anwaruddin Choudhury, but he thought it to be a new subspecies of Tibetan (or Père David's) macaque. It was described as a new species in 2004, when a group of scientists from the Nature Conservation Foundation, India reported it.
Rhesus macaque significance because the macaque is used as an experimental model of the human immune system. In humans, the preferentially expressed antigen of melanoma (PRAME) gene family is expanded. It is actively expressed in cancers, but normally is testis-specific, possibly involved in spermatogenesis. The PRAME family has 26 members on human chromosome 1. In the macaque, it has eight, and has been very simple and stable for millions of years. The PRAME family arose in translocations in the common mouse-primate ancestor 85 million years ago, and is expanded on mouse chromosome 4. DNA microarrays are used in macaque research. For example,