Background Sensitivity: on a B6 background, mice carrying this allele and a Y chromosome from AKR, LEWES/Ei, MA/MyJ, PL/J, RF/J, or the WSB/Ei inbred strain develop as infertile females
on a B6 background, mice carrying this allele and a Y chromosome derived from BUB/BnJ, C57BL/6JEi, SJL/J, ST/bJ, or the SWR/J inbred strain develop as males
litters from carrier males and normal females are reduced compared to normal; litters from matings of carrier females and normal males are even smaller in size
contain a notochord, however it can be retained in the roof of the gut or cloaca for varying distances and for a limited period, it may be slow to separate from the overlying neural plate or neural tube, or it may secondarily become incorporated completely into the neural tube or the tail-gut (J:15081)
the notocord has a central lumen in places (J:15081)
commonly see branching of the notochord proper; at E10-12.5, branches occur mainly in the region of the cloaca and the proximal parts of the tail (J:15081)
tail is reduced to a very short curly filament without skeleton and in some instances the tail is altogether absent (J:64262)
while approximately 5% of heterozygotes have a short tail not more than 20% normal length, most have no normal tail but a short boneless caudal filament (J:5003)
the centra of cervical vertebrae are wider than normal, the axis tends to ossify from twin centers, and distortion and fusion is found in some throacic centra