Bioinformatics analysis of Agouti gene among different species

Agouti gene plays an important role in the synthesis and distribution of coat color in domestic animals. In this report, a total of 71 Agouti gene sequences with the complete coding region (CDS) belonging to 15 species were analyzed. The result indicated that the averaged net genetic distance (Da) and the averaged nucleotide divergence (Dxy) were 0.2256 and 0.2145, respectively. Much more genetic diversity existed in Peromyscus maniculatus and Lama pacos. The genetic relationship between mammalian and Danio rerio was closer than that between birds and Danio rerio. The predicted promoter region of chicken Agouti gene was from 2600 bp to 3000 bp upstream of start codon.