Interaction of ASP and MC1R in black and brown alpaca.

Alpaca coat colour is a relevant feature both for breeders than textile industries. Agouti (ASP) and Extension (MC1R) are genes known to be involved in coat colour through pigmentation pathways by regulating type, amount and distribution of eumelanin and pheomelanin pigments in melanocytes. In alpaca genotype of ASP and MC1R genes have already been analysed distinctly, but their epistatic interaction have not been evaluated. In this study have been assessed their segregation more insights on black and brown phenotypes. In several mammals MC1R is epistatic over ASP, id est recessive allele in Agouti (a) and dominant allele in Extension locus (E) produces black phenotype. That is confirmed in alpaca where black coat has aH/aΔ57 and aH/ahT genotype on agouti and E/E or E/e genotype on MC1R locus. Otherwise ASP and MC1R in Brown/Red Brown, have a dominant profile at least in one allele as A/A, A/ahT on Agouti and E/e on Extension. Genotype and phenotype comparison clears that receptor and ligand are in concordance to produce pheomelanin and eumelanin in alpaca. Segregation analysis of 12 alpaca families genotyped by coat color, confirm the dominance of brown over black and could be helpful for coat colour classification and genotyping.