genetics

GENETICS in cats as applied to the Burmilla

Genetic chart on this page
Charts genetics of Colour and Pattern on this page
Simon Twigge on genetics - this is on this page
Horizons on Genetics Notes and Genetics discussion - this goes to Horizons pages and is a detailed discussion with illustrations

Genetic chart

symbol	name/s	recessive	name/s
A/-	agouti	a/a	non agouti, self
B/-	black	b/b	brown, chocolate
C/-	full colour, full expression	cb/cb	sepia, Burmese restriction (in Burmese)
D/-	dense (pigmentation)	d/d	dilute,maltesing
I/-	inhibitor, silver	i/i	golden, not silver, rufosed, rofused
L/	short hair	l/l	lomghair, semi longhair
O/-(X)	orange, tortie (F only)	o/o	not orange (usually not noted)
Ta/-	ticked , abbytabby (our term)	ta/ta	not abbytabby, macheral tabby, classic tabby, spotted tabby blotched tabby see below
Wb/-	wide band, smoke (in a./a)	wb/wb	not wide band, narrow band, non smoke
ta/ta requires that we consider Mc and Sp.
Mc/	mackerel tabby	mc/mc	classic tabby, Blotched.
Sp/-	spotted tabby	sp/sp	non spotted, (usually not noted)

Genetics of colour and pattern
Below are two charts that integrate the information above. Hopefully they will help with an understanding of the varieties of Colors and Patterns in cats. They are in a form that would be familiar to cat breeders.
Patterns are separate from Colors but certainly play on what the eye sees, particularly when I, Wb, and swb, come into play (the polygenetic cop out). Torties and long hair are not considered for this exercise.
The color terms used are generally those used in CCA; different fancies may use others (we have shown 2). These are the terms we will use, for now, when talking of "genetic color".
The reader will note there are effectively 11 colors. 12 if one can identify Russet Red.
Given 12 colors, 4 - 6 patterns, I, Wb, swb, L, and O, - that should give a rather large number of possibilities.
The reader will begin to understand why a number of Cat Fancies are slowly coming to the realization that cat coat can only truly be described by genetic terminology. For example how can one clearly describe the color Caramel? The reader will note the confusion left in the charts. Is it a golden (ticked) looking through blue/ indigo; or is it a diluted brown sometimes called fawn?
These charts also provide a mathematical distribution of the possibilities - - - the reader will note a number of errors and omissions in the standards that have been provided.

gen&colour

Simon Twigge on genetics. Simon is a senior member of the Breed Society in England. ( if I have stated that correctly)
We make the following comments to this very sound document.
1) The reader will note it is marked as copywritten and dated.
2) The chart format that he uses is particularly good and we have presented it above with additions and modifications as we see them - We do not use superscript as it makes typing more difficult and for no other reason. We separate nomenclature with slash and comma as in [ [ a/a,] .and we have placed the symbols in alphabetical order.
3) We hope the reader is not intimidated by the large numbers and mathematics- they are not necessary to the use and understanding for applied breeding.
4) We do not agree that DM exists and have stated our reasons on our Genetics pages.The recessive of O/- is o/o or o/y.
5) Simon's table 2 is very useful to the understanding however we do not agree on his definition of Smoke. We see it as a/a, Wb/-. The issue of a smoke's i/i is still open for us. BUT time will tell. - -variants genotype has an extra b. Perhaps Simon has updated since '99.

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