Cloning Of Genes KIT, KITLG, EDNRB And Their Correlation To The Dominant White Coat Color In Blue Fox, Alopex Lagopus

Animals form different coat colors because of pigment. There are several reasonsdetermining variant coat colors such as pigmentation synthesizing and expressingregions, expressing quantity and environmental factors. There is a variety of pigmentsin mammals and melanin matters most with the coat color. The diversity of quantity,structure and character of melanin determine variant coat colors. Melanin can bedivided into eumelanin(black/brown pigment)and pheomelanin(red/yellow pigment)depending on its characters. Melanin biosynthesizes and transports in melanoma cellsvia a series of enzyme catalyzing is a complex and sophisticated biological process inwhich any change in the process will likely lead to variant coat colors.Currently, researches on animal coat color mutant moleculor genetic mechanismare mainly through three ways: candidate gene approach, linkage analysis and genomewide association study.Blue fox is a coat color variation of wild arctic fox, belonging to CarnivoraCanidae. Blue fox is one of the mainly fur animals.Here we suggest that gene KIT,KITLG and EDNRB are related to the dominant white variation based on pathway andregulatory mechanisms of melanin biosynthesis and current study about coat colormutation especially dominant white on mice, pigs, horses and sheep.This experiment clones gene KIT, KITLG and EDNRB in wild type blue fox anddominant white mutation individuals and analyses nucleotide sequencescomparatively and get full-length coding sequence of the candidate gene KIT, KITLG,EDNRB in wild type blue fox individuals. Gene KITLG has an alternative splicing ofexon6in wild type blue fox.RT-PCR amplification and sequencing of gene KIT in dominant white individualsshowed that there was an alternative splicing in exon12, which occured only indominant white individuals. Sequencing of inron11to intron12suggested aSNP(single nucleotide polymorphism) was found at first base in intron12 （c.1867+1G>T）,this SNP was detectived in dominant white individuals only.Besides, there was a base insertion or deletion polymorphism in intron12, whichhappened in both coat color. PCR-RFLP in185individuals showed that this SNP isresponsible for dominant white phenotype.This experiment not only laid the foundation for further revealling biochemicalmechanism of dominant white mutation in blue fox, but also provided ideas andcandidate gene for other furry animals coat color mutation.