Abstract
Seven genes are involved in dog hair color, and the hair color specific to a species of dog has a complicated control. By insertion of SINE (short interspersed element) to SILV (Pmel17) gene, marble hair color is usually manifested as a phenotype; the color is called merle. But this genetic modification often causes physical abnormalities such as ophthalmologic disorders and difficulty in hearing. There are also cryptic merle dogs we cannot judge by appearance. When puppies are born with such defects, we speculate that the creptic merle gene is due to an unfortunate mating. In this paper, we used funduscopy on a twelve-year-old mixed-breed female dog whose hair color was not merle. As we obtained peculiar findings to those of dogs with SINE insertion to SILV gene, we did a gene sampling and gene screening, which resulted in confirmation of SINE insertion to SILV gene. Therefore, combination of funduscopy and gene screening is considered to be a powerful diagnostic tool in confirming a merle gene, and useful for more desirable mating.
