#finnish mutation

the most common cat color would be black, including black solids and black tabbies! there's a good amount of rare colors and i imagine some people would disagree with me about what is rare, but here's a few:

chocolate and cinnamon (solids)

lilac and fawn (dilute chocolate and cinnamon, solids)

silver smoke, shaded and tipped (different presentations of the inhibitor/silver restriction gene)

golden (another variation on the inhibitor gene)

amber (found in norwegian forest cats)

phoenix mutation

"red on blue" tabby and "pseudo-cinnamon" (i've actually seen some misinformation popping up about these guys recently >_>. a cool-tinted red cat is not necessarily one of these guys!!)

karpati mutation

finnish/salmiak/salt licorice mutation

Basically, I learnt most of the genetics of cats and some rodents from a book called the Colour Inheritance in Small Livestock by Roy Robinson. Printed 2013.

But new genes has since been discovered, part 3

Carnelian (kopal, serdolik)- kurilian bobtail

What is it- starts out reddish, then turns pure red with dark tail tip with age (no dark hairs, except tail tip).

Genetics- co-dominant extension gene, ec (sometimes es). In single is golden, in double is Carnelian.

Notes-

Single tabby with Inhibitor gene looks like bimetallic (single self with I is normal smoke)

Single with wideband gene is brownish golden with dorsoventral paleness.

With self colourpoint is taupe points

Copal/kopal is name for heterozygous (single) carnelian.

Kaparti- laperm, lykoi, randonbred cats in carpathians, Transylvanian breed.

What is it- start light and grizzled with white points. With age is almost black, with white points. Sometimes have black face.

Genetics- dominant,

Notes-

Type of roan

Tempreture based points

With colourpoint- is powdery points

Salmiak- randonbred

What is it- originally called Finnish mutation, it causes a roan effect, with a black head and white spots.

Genetics- KIT gene (white mutation). Recessive

Notes-

Found in Finland and Hungary in randonbred cats

Actualy discovered in 2007, despite the gene being discovered as a KIT mutation in a study only recently.

Named for the Finnish salted Liquorice, which its pattern resembles

Originally thought to be a variant of homogenous Kaparti

Phoenix/pseudo cinnamon- Maine coons

What is it- turns red cats into mahogany

Genetics- dominant.

Notes-

Born golden with blue paws and tail

Changes pads colour and brighter eyes

Opposite to extension gene

In self cats the tabby markings are visible as mahogany on bluish background.

Caramel/apricot- Oriental shorthair, Siamese, Balinese, Oriental Longhairs, Tonkinese, Burmese, Birman and British Shorthair/Longhair

What is it- transforms dilute colours - blue, lilac, fawn, cream - into caramel (in black-based colours) and apricot (in cream cats)

Genetics- Dilute modifier gene (Dm). Dominant in dilute cats. Masked in dense.

Notes-

Have metallic sheen on them.

Doesn't effect dense colours (black, choc, cinnamon, red).

Blue caramel is sometimes called just caramel and cinnamon caramel is sometimes called Taupe.

Pink eyed dilution in cats- two accounts in domestic (both female). In Donskoy (Milkdud)

What is it- It changed black to a fawn/bluish-tan colour and the eyes had a red pupil and gold flecked red/pink irides (iris)

Genetics- recessive, modification of eumelanin. "oculocutaneous albinism with the identification of a splice-site variant in Hermansky–Pudlak Syndrome 5 gene”

Notes-

"Black cat hair (non-agouti) contains numerous small dark brown to black melanin granules uniformly distributed throughout all portions from base to tip of the hair.

Smoke cat hair (non-agouti + inhibitor (silver) gene) has a scarcity of melanin granules at the base of the hair.

Blue cat hair (non-agouti + dilution) has larger basic melanin granules, but still relatively regularly shaped, and a non-uniform distribution of granules.

Chediak-Higashi Smoke cat hair trait has even larger melanin granules than the blue dilution, and they are relatively irregularly shaped. All of the cats were Persian and resembled blue smoke Persians.

The pink-eyed dilute cat hair had very small yellowish-brown melanin granules and very few larger granules. Under the microscope, some lighter banding could be seen on the hairs, but the tip was coloured. The base of the hair was paler than the tip (agouti banding)."

Is not c gene. Like albino

She was a blotched tabby (dominant) with moderate white spotting (dominant) and had a slight kink at the tip of her tail.

Was called flavism and Ukraine chocolate in Donskoy once

Has irregular heats

Has no tapetum lucidum and poor vision

Here’s your boy!!

KESTRELFLIGHT

“No. I think they were angry with me for staying away. But I had to stay with my Clan, didn't I?”

[Gray-brown ticked spotted tabby with yellow eyes and the Finnish mutation.]

I finally got the chance to draw a standing kitty!! And Kestrelflight is my victim >:)

Oké, here's the deal: since we still don't really know the mutation(s), i can't say that this's the currant scientific agreement; what's more, as far as i'm concerned, this is just the theory of the author of messybeast (although i've seen several people on facebook in cat genetics and karpati cats groups agree), BUT right now it seems like the finnish mutation is the equivalent of nonagouti homozygous karpati with white spotting. (I do think it's a convincing theory.)

Here is the messybeast article with comparisons.

[Image Source: Messybeast]

A New Finnish Flavor of Feline Coat Coloration, “Salmiak,” is Associated With a 95-kb Deletion Downstream of the KIT Gene

Cats with a distinctive white hair pattern of unknown molecular cause have been discovered in the Finnish domestic cat population. Based on the unique appearance of these cats, we have named this phenotype salmiak (“salty licorice”). The use of a commercially available panel test to genotype four salmiak-colored cats revealed the absence of all known variants associated with white-haired phenotypic loci: full White (W), Spotting (Ws) and the Birman white Gloves associated (wg) allele of the KIT proto-oncogene (KIT) gene. Whole-genome sequencing on two salmiak-colored cats was conducted to search for candidate causal variants in the KIT gene. Despite a lack of coding variants, visual inspection of the short read alignments revealed a large ~95 kb deletion located ~65 kb downstream of the KIT gene in the salmiak cats. Additional PCR genotyping of 180 domestic cats and three salmiak-colored cats confirmed the homozygous derived variant genotype fully concordant with the salmiak phenotype. We suggest the newly identified variant be designated as wsal for “w salmiak”.