The Colors of Mice: A Model Genetic Network

“For example, melaninforming enzymes are not functional unless they enter the melanosomes and become activated in the endoplasmic reticulum (Lamoreux et al., 2010).”

“Failure to migrate or proliferate sufficiently results in the unpigmented patches seen in humans (Fleischman et al., 1991), numerous mouse mutants (Lamoreux et al., 2010) and also in the selectively bred piebald patterns of domestic animals, such as horses and cows (Hauswirth et al., 2012;…”

“The latter reflects the impact of HPS on mouse coat color and the ease with which spontaneous coat color mutants can be detected and propagated.(47,48) Such spontaneous mutations have given rise to at least 15 HPS models in the mouse including correlates of all of the human HPS variants and mutants in genes encoding t…”

“…is more pronounced in the background of mutations at the Tyrp1 locus, encoding the melanogenic enzyme TYRP1 (Dunn and Thigpen, 1930; Hellström et al. , 2011; Lamoreux et al. , 2010), perhaps suggesting that PMEL is most effective in detoxifying intermediates that accumulate in the absence of TYRP1.”

“Among the genetic factors, the coat color genes are the most important (Bennett and Lamoreux, 2003; Hirobe and Abe, 1999; Lamoreux et al., 2001, 2010; Silvers, 1979).”