Fringe/lesser known genes?

[user 7388]

Hey all, I'm new.

I've recently got super interested in rabbit genetics. There's a wealth of information about the colour and pattern genes:

A, B, C, D, E, En, Du, Si, V, W, P

And there's also information about coat structure genes:

f (furless), l (long/angora), r (rex), sa (satin), wa (wavy)

I've also been able to to find information about other genes:

y (yellow fat), br (brachydactyly), dw (dwarf)

Trying to go deeper, I've sussed out some more, but I'm having some trouble getting more information about them:

M (mane), like on the Lionhead. Incomplete dominance, homozygotes are double maned. Why isn't this more common on other breeds, non-dwarf breeds?
lo (lofferohr aka spoon ears), a sex-linked neotenic gene like dwarfism. Does it exist outside of dwarf rabbits? Functionally, could this be bred up to a giant rabbit?
pt (paralytic tremor), another sex-linked gene and obviously something one wants to avoid.
wh (wirehair), I found this referenced in an old, 1930s-ish article, alongside the following gene
wu (wuzzy), but I can't find either of these referenced in modern literature. Do they exist? Where they replaced in name by sa and wa? For that matter,
Astrex, is this just llrr or some other rex structure combo? Or is there another gene at play? I've had difficulty finding the answers I'm looking for about this.

Any other genes we know, but aren't mentioned here? I'm going to make another thread for modifier genes, I've also got a ton of questions about those, but this thread is for the more distinct genes as above. Thanks in advance!

 

[Zass]

Mane is becoming fairly common in meat mutt herds.

As it's fairly easy to spot even with only one single copy of the gene present, it's very easy to completely breed it out where it isn't desired.
(Simply do not continue breeding any animal with a mane, bam...no more manes.)
Since no breed standard calls for manes in larger breeds, no mane genes are present.

If you want a giant maned rabbit, it would be fairly easy to produce in just a few generations. I've seen some pretty big maned NZ mutts.


Some of these other genes aren't intentionally bred in due to related health issues, or simple because there is no breed who's standard calls for them in our countries.
Some, like astrex, are just incredibly hard to pin down and produce healthy animals with. It may take several genes to express good curl, which is often lost when breeders try to recreate it, and where it is found developmental hair loss, and failure-to-thrive plague breeders attempts to work with it.

If we're lucky, someone from outside the US can fill us in a bit on genes we don't have in any breed over here yet.
Leucistic, is one I remember off the top.
The old RT archives have a lot of conversations about these genes, and it may be worthwhile to look them up individually.

This article mentions spoon ears, and perhaps the reasons we haven't bred a larger one. :
https://bunny-breeding.beepworld.de/mai ... cility.htm

 

[user 7388]

That article is where I learned about lo to begin with!

Cool, good to know manes are becoming more popular in larger breeds. I figured they would be, since it's a neat trait, and no reason for it to stay limited to the dwarf breeds. It seems like breeding for lo should be avoided but I confess I remain curious about how it would present on a larger rabbit, if the health challenges can be managed by breeding it up in carriers before selecting for it for display.

Similarly I've been wondering about how the dw gene would work with something like a Flemish Giant. It seems that the dw mutation first appeared through selectively breeding for small size, the Hermelin line of rabbits. Once it appeared they were able to create even smaller rabbits like the ND and Lionhead. It's super interesting to me that the dw mutation cropped up through selectively breeding for small size in the first place, but now that it's there, the allele could be bred back up to larger rabbits in theory right? If a false dwarf is a little under twice the size of a true dwarf (in the case of ND, ~4lbs to ~2.5lbs)... would a Dwdw Flemish Giant just be a strangely neotenic ~6lb rabbit? I presume a dwdw peanut would still be unviable even on a large rabbit on account of the gastrointestinal tract being underdeveloped (which I believe is the working theory on why peanuts always fail to thrive, not necessarily just because they're "too small") but I wonder if that's ever been tested.

Furthermore, I find it super interesting that the mane gene mutated through the intentional crossing of miniature Swiss Fox and a Netherland dwarf to make the Lionhead (or so the story goes.) You'd think mutations would be more random happenstance, but in this case if true, someone wanted to make fuzzier NDs, crossed to a long-haird breed (I presume Swiss Fox have the same genes as other angoras, ll, since that's where they were bred from) and it resulted in a new gene M that's separate from ll. Now you can breed rabbits with both, llMM. It's fascinating and makes me wonder what other mutations can be coerced out of the rabbit genome through intentional crossing.

Leucism is a Vienna homozygote, isn't it? Or is there another form of leucism that's appeared? Related to the above paragraph about intentional mutations, I guess that's what happened when Wilhelm Mucke set out to create the BEW in the late 1800s/early 1900s. Presumably the Vienna gene didn't exist before or there would already be BEWs. It was so long ago that I can't find the details on HOW he created the original Vienna White rabbits... but presumably it was a mutation that cropped up while selecting for whiter and whiter rabbits (I've read that there's some potential linkage between V and Du, maybe he was breeding Dutches in order to get the Vienna mutation? Now that Du is known to have dud and duw, perhaps v mutated from duw...?)

Any chance you know anything about the wuzzy/wirehair thing then? This is where I read about it: https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article ... m=fulltext Just haven't been able to find anything more than this. <br /><br /> __________ Tue Sep 01, 2020 10:05 pm __________ <br /><br /> Oh... I just stumbled upon this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/bi ... -cuniculus

That's... pretty comprehensive. Quite a few genes listed!

 

[hotzcatz]

Maybe a list of the little known genes and a description of what they look like would be really helpful? I have no idea what 'leucism' may be?

The genes I'd be interested in would be for angora rabbits. The English have fuzzy ears, yet lately in some pure English I'm noticing less ear 'furnishings'. Haven't a clue why they're not remaining as they were.

Last year an 'extra fuzzy' was born right alongside a 'less than fuzzy'. Same litter! Pure English parents.

That's the 'extra fluffy' DaffyDill at 8 weeks old, he's now a herd buck but I don't have any offspring from him yet. He will hopefully meet up with somebunny this weekend and maybe I'll be able to find out if that extra-fluffy breeds true.

That's his full sister, Buttercup also at 8 weeks old. She currently has a litter, but they've not quite gotten to the growing fluff stage. In another week or two I should be able to tell if any of them are going to be extra fluffy or not.

What genes would be behind this sort of thing? Part of the 'll' for long wool?

What genes are for the texture of the wool? I try to breed densely wooled and silky to similar in order to get more densely wooled and silky offspring, but I don't know the genetics behind it. How do folks figure out genetics for these sorts of things?

 

[user 7388]

Hmm, the only other gene I know of that adds wool like angora would be maned, which is what the Lionhead has and has been bred back to some larger breed populations. From what I understand, maned appeared as a novel mutation in the 1900s when ND breeders started crossing NDs with mini Swiss Fox rabbits which carry angora. A dominant mutation occurred and created the M locus. Maned is partially dominant, so MM homozygotes have a double mane whereas Mm is a single mane. Perhaps you have mane genes floating around in your herd alongside the angora?

Other than that, I'm sure there are modifier polygenes which can affect how much wool is formed on an ll homozygote, but those are hard to pin down. I just posted a new topic on coat structure if you want to dive into more research into it with me!

 

[hotzcatz]

There weren't any maned genes in the original herd, however I got in a rabbit from Maui that is the offspring of an unpedigreed rabbit bought from a FB spinner's group. The rabbit looks English, but with no pedigree, who knows what's in there.

There were two mainland rabbits owned by a spinner. I think there was an 'oops' litter, not sure. The offspring from that "looks English" according to someone with probably a not very educated eye. That 'looks like English' rabbit was bred to one of my pedigreed English and the offspring from that pair is the dam of the extra-fuzzy bun. She was bred to another pedigreed English so we know everyone except the great-grandparents on his dam's side. He's got much more 'furnishings' than the usual English and I haven't seen it before. If anything, there's been less furnishings lately, even with the same bloodlines as before.

I just bred him today to a doe with lovely textured wool. Silky, dense, crimpy. It will be interesting to see how the two do together. If I get a doe offspring, I may breed her back to him to see if the extra-fuzzy breeds true or not.

But maned gene or not, the English angora has a fuzzy face and ears, there's gotta be some sort of specific 'furnishings' gene for the English angora. It's probably a recessive since it disappears in crossbred angoras. I had a Satin/German buck and he had a clean head. He was bred to an English and the offspring had sorta 'semi' furnishings. They had wool on the sides of their face and on the tips of their ears. I've been breeding back to English each generation and they're getting more English but the ear furnishings are still sparse sometimes and they sometimes have more of a cylindrical body than the cobby half dome of the English.