When Rudyard Kipling told how the leopard got his spots, he missed the mark. Leopards have "rosettes"; spots are for cheetahs. But whatever you call the markings, how these wild cats—and their domestic counterparts—acquire them has long been a mystery. Now, researchers have found an answer by studying domestic cats. In doing so they have shown that a 70-year-old theory explaining color patterns in nature holds true in cats, and likely, in other mammals as well. Molecules belonging to a key developmental pathway called Wnt signaling interact to establish spots and stripes at an earlier than expected stage of development, the researchers discovered. Mutations in one of these molecules' genes cause spots to be so small and numerous that the cats seem to be a solid color. Tweaks to another gene lead to large blotches, thereby illustrating how such a wide variety of coat color patterns could have evolved.

当鲁德亚德·吉卜林（Rudyard Kipling）告诉豹子如何获得他的位置时，他错过了分数。豹子有“玫瑰花”。斑点是猎豹的。但是，无论您如何称呼这些标记，这些野猫及其家猫如何获得它们，一直是一个谜。现在，研究人员通过研究家猫找到了答案。通过这样做，他们已经表明，一种解释自然界中的颜色图案的理论已有70年历史了，在猫中以及在其他哺乳动物中也是如此。研究人员发现，属于称为Wnt信号传导的关键发育途径的分子相互作用，可以在预期的发育早期建立斑点和条纹。这些分子的基因之一发生突变，导致斑点变得如此之小，数量众多，以至于猫看起来是纯色的。调整另一个基因会导致大斑点，