2010 National DNA Day Online Chatroom Transcript

This is just one question from an archive of the National DNA Day Moderated Chat held in April 2010. The NHGRI Director and many genomics experts from across NHGRI took questions from students, teachers and the general public on topics ranging from basic genomic research, to the genetic basis of disease, to ethical questions about genetic privacy.

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What causes the color patterns in a calico or tortise shell cat?
     Lucia Hindorff, Ph.D., M.P.H.: I am currently working with a number of investigators around the country on a program that is designed to take the most promising genetic variants from recent studies and learn more about them in large populations with extensive data. I hope to learn more about the different pathways that these variants are involved in and possibly identify some environmental factors that may modify disease associations. I am also one of the curators of the NHGRI GWAS Catalog, a summary of findings from published genome-wide association studies. A calico cat is a cool visual example of X-inactivation. In female cells, two copies of the X chromosome are present and one is randomly inactivated. So that means that if a cat carries two different "flavors" of the gene for fur color, there will be a mix of genes that will be activated, resulting in a patchwork of fur color.
McClesky Middle School in GA (7th grade student)

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