This article is from the WSSF 2010 AFRMA Rat & Mouse Tales news-magazine.

By Virginia Pochmann

From Mouse Review No. 4, Feb. 1989

Fanciers may be interested to know that scientists have discovered that the colors Blue and Dominant Yellow (genes d and A^y) are caused by the insertion of a virus into the gene, where it is replicated and inherited from then on.

Reference:

• Jenkins, Copeland, Taylor, & Lee. 1981 Dilute (d) coat color-mutation of mice associated with the site of integration of an ecotropic MuLV genome. Nature 293.
• Copeland, Jenkins, & Lee. 1983. Association of the lethal yellow (A^y) coat color mutation with an ecotropic murine leukemia virus genome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80 pp 247–249.