Cats’s stripes and spot tracked

THE gene that produces the striking dark stripes on
tabby cats is also responsible for the spots on cheetahs,
a new study reports. And a mutation of this
same gene causes the stripes in cats and spots on
cheetahs to become blotchy.
“Nobody had any idea what the genes were
that were involved in these things,” said Stephen
O’Brien, a geneticist now at St. Petersburg University
in Russia and one of the researchers who led
the study. “When the feline genome became available,
we began to look for them.”
O’Brien and his colleagues published their discovery
of the gene, known as Taqpep, in the current
issue of the journal Science. Cheetahs that have the
Taqpep mutation belong to a rare breed found in
South Africa. Tabbies with the mutation are more
often found in Europe, O’Brien said.
The researchers used DNA samples and tissue
samples from feral cats in Northern California,
along with small skin biopsies and blood samples
from captive and wild South African and Namibian
cheetahs. The scientists also discovered a second
gene, Edn3, that controls hair colour in the cats’
coat patterns.
There is more work to be done in looking at
other genes, and at other cats both domestic and
wild, O’Brien said.