Re: Is it possible to take animal hair and pick out a specific gene?

Hi Sharon!

Mc1r regulates melanogenesis in mammals - like mice, mamoths and humans -
and thus is responsible for, e.g. their hair and skin color.

So, it sure would be possible to "pick out" the gene for Mc1r in humans
and/or other animals (even non-mammals, like reptiles etc have the Mc1r
gene, even though it has somewhat of a different function there). And you
wouldn't even have to take a hair to isolate this gene (infact hairs
themself only contain very little DNA) - about any cell of the body would
do, as almost every cell (apart from, for example, the red blood cells)
contains the complete genome, i.e. all genes of the animal/human your
looking at.

I doubt however such a project can be easily performed at a high school
since it involves some fancy machines (for example to carry out PCR or
sequencing) and, depending on what you're trying to show, use of hazardous
substances.
Luckily, however, some other people have carried out such a project and you
can at least have a look at the DNA and amino acid sequences of human Mc1r:
Just go to: 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/viewer.fcgi?db=nucleotide&val=27477128

and scroll all the way down.

Erik