The genetic blueprint of the mouse published today shows there is little genetic difference between the animals and humans.
Both have about 30,000 genes and share the bulk of them, while 90 percent of genes linked to diseases in humans are similar to those in mice.
"We share 99 percent of our genes with mice, and we even have the genes that could make a tail," said Dr Jane Rogers, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England.
Dr Rogers and a consortium of scientists around the world collaborated on the genome, or complete list of coded instructions to make a mouse, which is published in the science journal Nature.
It is regarded as the most important scientific breakthrough since the sequencing of the human genome nearly two years ago and the key to understanding human genes and how they contribute to illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, the world's biggest killers.
"It's different in important ways - otherwise we'd be small, furry animals running around on the floor," Dr Robert Waterston of Washington University in St Louis, who led the study, told a news conference in Washington.
By comparing the two genomes, researchers have already identified 1,200 new human genes and 9,000 new mouse genes. There are only 300 genes unique to either organism, proving that the mouse is the ideal model to study human diseases and to test new treatments.
Mouse models of human illnesses enable scientists to accelerate research and to manipulate genes in the mouse which have not been studied in humans.