Over the years it has been the mouse coat colour genes that have played a significant role in the understanding of the basic aspects of mammalian genetics. This holds true for the Underwhite locus which encodes for the MATP (membrane-associated transporter protein) protein, which has been used repeatedly as a coat colour marker in gene linkage and mapping studies. For many years, it was the phenotypic marker of choice for locating genes on chromosome 15....

In 1975, the Grey Agouti gerbil was first discovered in a London petshop, it later died out but a couple of years later it appeared again and is now very common in the UK and Europe, although in the USA it is still regarded as a fairly uncommon variety. The coat colour closely resembles the chinchilla mutation of the albino series of alleles (C locus) in mice and other domestic livestock. Research on the mutant showed that this wasn’t the case and in 1985 it led to the publication of this early research in the Journal of Heredity....

The gerbil mutation timeline has been revised and updated and now includes more information on each mutation, with an update on the now extinct "hairless gerbil" that appeared in a colony in a research laboratory in 1978 at Birmingham University.

Click the link here or click the picture on the left to go to the Mongolian gerbil mutation timeline.