My cat’s coat is mostly white with dark tabby patches. What’s going on?
Have you ever wondered why your cat’s coat looks the way it does? Wonder no longer! Earlier this month, Emily Summerbell, a PhD student at Emory University, tweeted a ‘tweetorial’ on cat coat genetics. I used it to figure out the underlying genetics for my own cat’s coat.
This is my cat ‘Little Excuse’ (because when he’s sleeping on your lap, you’ve got an excuse to not get up).
Excuse has a short coat, which is controlled by the FGF5 gene. Short hair (L) is the dominant trait, meaning that if one out of two copies, or alleles, of the gene encodes for short hair, the cat will end up with short hair. Excuse is either homozygous, meaning he has two short hair alleles (LL), or heterozygous, meaning he has one short hair, and one long hair allele (Ll).
Though Excuse is for the majority white (we’ll get back to that later), he generally has dark-colored fur. This is encoded by the TYRP1 gene, for which the black allele is dominant. If he would have the allele for orange hair, this would override the black color, so the lack of any orange means that he has the recessive allele for the orange gene.
Back to the white fur. White fur is caused by the KIT gene, but it is not all-or-nothing. As you can see, Excuse is more than 50% white, which indicates that he is probably homozygous for the dominant white gene (SS).
Lastly, although it’s not clearly visible in this picture, Excuse’s dark patches have a tabby pattern to them. This is caused by the agouti and tabby genes, where the agouti gene determines whether a cat has a solid color coat, and the tabby gene determines the exact pattern.
Emily goes into much more detail in her Twitter thread, explaining colorpoint coat patterns, cats with diluted colors and more. If you are wondering why your cat looks the way it does, this thread will tell you all you need to know.
But in the meantime, what colour is your cat’s coat — and do you know why?
Enjoy reading ASBMB Today?
Become a member to receive the print edition four times a year and the digital edition monthly.
Learn moreGet the latest from ASBMB Today
Enter your email address, and we’ll send you a weekly email with recent articles, interviews and more.
Latest in Science
Science highlights or most popular articles
Unraveling the language of histones
Philip Cole presented his research on how posttranslational modifications to histones are involved in gene expression and how these modifications could be therapeutically targeted to treat diseases like cancer.
How Alixorexton could transform narcolepsy treatment
A new investigational drug, alixorexton, targets the brain’s orexin system to restore wakefulness in people with narcolepsy type 1. Alkermes chemist Brian Raymer shares how molecular modeling turned a lab idea into a promising phase 3 therapy.
Phosphatases and pupils: A dual legacy
Yale professor Anton Bennett explores how protein tyrosine phosphatases shape disease, while building a legacy of mentorship that expands opportunity and fuels discovery in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Extracellular vesicles offer clues to cattle reproduction
Extracellular vesicles from pregnant cattle support embryo development better than laboratory models, highlighting their potential to improve reproductive efficiency in bovine embryo cultures. Read more about this recent MCP paper.
Proteomics reveals protein shifts in diabetic eye disease
Using proteomics, researchers identified protein changes in eye fluid that mark diabetic retinopathy progression and may serve as biomarkers for vision-threatening complications. Read more about this recent MCP paper.
Protein modifications drive lung cancer resistance
New assay enriches protein modifications in a single process, enabling detection of key changes in drug-resistant lung cancer cells that may guide future therapies.