By Carol Beuchat PhD
Those with a fascination for the genetics of coat color in dogs will no doubt be familiar with the excellent website Genetics of Coat Color and Type in Dogs created by Dr Sheila Schmutz, a geneticist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
A new paper by Schmutz and D.L. Dreger ( 2014) adds a few new wrinkles to our understanding of the complexity of canine coat color, focusing on three genes in the pigmentation pathway: the Agouti signal protein (ASIP), Melanocortin receptor 1 (MC1R), and Beta-defensin 103 (DEFB103). They argue that the usual characterization of non-additive genetic interactions of coat color genes as either dominance deviation or epistasis is too simplistic. They suggest that some additional types of non-additive genetic interactions should be considered, including "multiple modification" and "specific modification", and they provide some examples of each.
You can download a copy of this interesting paper from the link below.
Those with a fascination for the genetics of coat color in dogs will no doubt be familiar with the excellent website Genetics of Coat Color and Type in Dogs created by Dr Sheila Schmutz, a geneticist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
A new paper by Schmutz and D.L. Dreger ( 2014) adds a few new wrinkles to our understanding of the complexity of canine coat color, focusing on three genes in the pigmentation pathway: the Agouti signal protein (ASIP), Melanocortin receptor 1 (MC1R), and Beta-defensin 103 (DEFB103). They argue that the usual characterization of non-additive genetic interactions of coat color genes as either dominance deviation or epistasis is too simplistic. They suggest that some additional types of non-additive genetic interactions should be considered, including "multiple modification" and "specific modification", and they provide some examples of each.
You can download a copy of this interesting paper from the link below.
- Schumutz SM & DL Dreger 2014 Genetic interatinos among three pigmentation loci in domestic dogs. Proc 10th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production; August 2014. (pdf).
