Understanding the evolutionary dynamics of hair color related genes of small mammals and development of phylogeographicl markers

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K07177
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Biodiversity/Systematics
• Research Institution: Hokkaido University
• Principal Investigator: SUZUKI Hitoshi 北海道大学, 地球環境科学研究院, 教授 (40179239)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 毛色関連遺伝子 / 系統地理学 / Mc1r / Asip / 多重遺伝子族 / ハプロタイプ構造解析 / メラニズム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Nuclear DNA haplotype structure analyses in the Japanese wild mice yielded a possible average fragment length of 170 kb of Mus musculus castaneus haplotypes in the M. m. musculus background genome in northern Japan, providing a rough estimate of its elapsed time of 800 generations under an assumption of continued backcrossing. Our analyses showed sporadic appearance of long fragments (2-5 Mb) from the west European subspecies Mus musculus domesticus, indicating contemporary stowaway introduction. In melanistic rats found on Okinawa, a predicted loss-of-function mutation caused by a cysteine to serine amino acid change at p.124C>S (c.370T>A) in the highly conserved functional domain of Asip was suggested to be responsible for the observed melanism. A haplotype structure analysis suggested the possibility of in-situ mutation of the Asip gene within the population on Okinawa.

Free Research Field

分子系統学