**Acknowledgements**

This work was supported by CONICET (PIP N° 0272) and by Fundación Científica Felipe Fiorellino, Universidad Maimónides, Argentina. We are especially grateful to the Ministerio de Asuntos Agrarios, Dirección de Flora y Fauna, Buenos Aires Province for enabling animal capture, to the personnel of ECAS for their invaluable help in trapping and handling the animals, to VMD. Sergio Ferraris and his staff for their essential help on vizcachas handling and anesthetizing, to Mr. Alejandro Schmidt for his technical assistance in image processing and to Ms. María Grisel Clausi Schettini for her excellent technical assistance in tissue processing.

## **Author details**

Julia Halperin1,2\*, Veronica B. Dorfman1,2 and Alfredo D. Vitullo1,2

\*Address all correspondence to: halperin.julia@maimonides.edu

1 Center for Biomedical, Biotechnological, Environmental and Diagnostical Studies (CEBBAD), Maimónides University, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2 CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina
