![]() These are called periodic color patterns. The colors of cats are more intricate than the hues of humanity, with striations and spots of light and dark creating the distinctive coat patterns of ocelots, jaguars, cheetahs, and of course the leopard’s spots of fable fame. The overall color reflects the proportions of black−brown eumelanin and red−yellow pheomelanin. Humans of different skin colors have about the same number of melanocytes, but the cells produce differing amounts of the two variations of melanin pigment. Local-acting hormones determine the output of pigments from cells called melanocytes, but the number of melanocytes tends to be the same in all individuals of a species. In mammals the situation is more complex. ![]() It’s a little like following the directions in a paint-by-numbers kit and watching an image emerge as small areas of color become confluent. The work revealed a novel mechanism behind the origin of stripes, like Jackie’s in the photograph.Ĭolor is easier to study in fish, in which individual pigment cells denote a specific color, and the organization of the cells forms patterns. ![]() To trace the origins of the common striped coat pattern, the team analyzed gene expression in single skin cells from fetuses collected from feral cats in trap-neuter-release programs being spayed – half of such females are pregnant. However, the biology underlying mammalian color pattern has long been a mystery, one in which we have now gained new insight using domestic cats,” said Barsh, who is editor-in-chief of PLoS Genetics. “The genes that control simple color variation, like albinism or melanism, are the same in all mammals for the most part. Their findings appear in Nature Communications. Now Christopher Kaelin, Kelly McGowan, and Gregory Barsh, from the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, have discovered how the tabby cat got its stripes: from a signal in the fetus. In 1902’s Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling famously explained how the leopard got his spots in what would today be deemed an extremely racist fable.
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