A candidate mutation responsible for coat color dilution in cattle

Recently, a new genetically autosomal recessive color phenotype emerged in the red pied bovine Montbéliarde breed. It is characterized by a dilution of the red areas of the coat and was denominated “milca”. Genome wide homozygosity scan of 106 cases followed by haplotype analysis revealed a candidate region within BTA2 between positions 89.95 and 91.63 megabases. Analysis of whole genome sequence data generated from milca animals identified a strong candidate variant within the coding region of the Frizzled-7 gene (FZD7)