Coat color allele and mtDNA haplotype distributions in Russian cat populations: a citizen-science research

Abstract

28This work has started as a project for the summer school in molecular and theoretical 29 biology. Efficient teaching and learning modern methods of molecular biology and population 30 genetics in a two-week study course for high school students needs an attractive subject. We 31 chose phylogeography of the domestic cat as the subject of our project because 1) everybody 32 likes cats; 2) cats are polymorphic for several coat color mutations, which can be easily detected 33 by street survey or in the photographs; 3) samples for DNA extraction are easy to collect without 34 posing ethical and biosafety problems; 4) rich background information of geographical 35 distribution of coat color alleles and variation in mtDNA is available; 5) phylogeography of cat 36 population in Russia is poorly studied and therefore new data collected in this large territory 37 may shed a light on the global cat distribution and on the origin of the fancy breeds. 38During the project students studied coat color and mitotype distribution across Russian 39 random bred cats. The basics of field (observations of natural cat populations, hair collection), 40 formal (inheritance of coat colors), mathematical population (allele frequency distributions and 41 their comparisons, building phylogenetic trees, multidimensional scaling), and molecular 42 (DNA extraction and amplification, quality control of DNA sequencing data) genetics were 43 covered. 44We scored coat color phenotypes in 1182 cats and sequenced mtDNA control region 45 from hair samples of 38 cats from 18 geographical sites. Analysis of coat color alleles 46 frequencies and mitotype distribution confirmed relative homogeneity of gene pools of Russian 47 cat populations, indicating their recent origin. We found several unique mitotypes and 48 demonstrated that OL1 mitotype, previously found only in Siberian fancy breed, was present in 49 random bred cats from several Russian cities. This contributes to the discussion on the origin 50 of the Siberian breed of cats, and supports the view that Siberians is a recent breed created in 51