Abstract: Melanocortin receptor 1 gene (Melanocortin Receptor 1, Mc1r) is the major candidate gene in the regulation of mammalian coat color, which plays an important role in animal′s coat color. There were 112 Tupaia belangeri collected from 10 geographical populations， and 954 bp mc1r sequence was amplified by PCR and analyzed. The results showed that the 954 bp mc1r sequence encoded 317 amino acids. The secondary structure of protein was mainly composed of α-helix containing 7 transmembrane domains. Phylogenetic tree of mc1r showed that 10 populations of tree shrews were clustered into 4 branches:CladeⅠ(HaiNan Population), CladeⅡ(DaXin Population)， CladeⅢ(PianMa Population) and CladeⅣ(Dali, Mengla, Hekou, Kunming, Leye, Xingyi and Xichang populations) .The results showed that different living environments cause the differences in tree shrews’s coat color.

Key words: melanocortin receptor 1, Tupaia belangeri, geographical population