A non-epistatic interaction of agouti and extension in the fox, Vulpes vulpes

Agouti and extension are two genes that control the production of yellow-red (phaeomelanin) and brown-black (eumelanin) pigments in the mammalian coat(1). Extension encodes the melanocyte-stimulating hormone receptor (MC1R)(2,3) while agouti encodes a peptide antagonist of the receptor(4-6). In the mouse, extension is epistatic to agouti(7,8), hence dominant mutants of the MC1R encoding constitutively active receptors are not inhibited by the agouti antagonist, and animals with dominant alleles of both loci remain darkly pigmented, In the fox the proposed extension locus is not epistatic to the agouti locus(9,10). We have cloned and characterized the MC1R and the agouti gene in coat colour variants of the fox (Vulpes vulpes). A constitutively activating C125R mutation in the MC1R was found specifically in darkly pigmented animals carrying the Alaska Silver allele (E(A)). A deletion in the first coding exon of the agouti gene was found associated with the proposed recessive allele of agouti in the darkly pigmented Standard Silver fox (aa). Thus, as in the mouse, dark pigmentation can be caused by a constitutively active MC1R, or homozygous recessive status at the agouti locus. Our results, demonstrating the presence of dominant extension alleles in foxes with significant red coat colouration, suggest the ability of the fox agouti protein to counteract the signalling activity of a constitutively active fox MC1R.