A splice variant in KRT71 is associated with curly coat phenotype of Selkirk Rex cats

One of the salient features of the domestic cat is the aesthetics of its fur. The Selkirk Rex breed is defined by an autosomal dominant woolly rexoid hair (ADWH) abnormality that is characterized by tightly curled hair shafts. A genome-wide case – control association study was conducted using 9 curly coated Selkirk Rex and 29 controls, including straight-coated Selkirk Rex, British Shorthair and Persian, to localize the Selkirk autosomal dominant rexoid locus (SADRE). Although the control cats were from different breed lineages, they share recent breeding histories and were validated as controls by Bayesian clustering, multi-dimensional scaling and genomic inflation. A significant association was found on cat chromosome B4 (P(raw) = 2.87 × 10(−11)), and a unique haplotype spanning ~600 Kb was found in all the curly coated cats. Direct sequencing of four candidate genes revealed a splice site variant within the KRT71 gene associated with the hair abnormality in Selkirk Rex.