Melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), one of the key genes in animal melanin synthesis pathway, plays an important role in determining animal body color and coat color. Oujiang color common carp (Cyprinus carpio var. color), characterized as five kinds of body color patterns with black patches (e.g. “whole red”, “whole red with big black patch”, ”whole red with scattered black spots” ,“whole white” and “whole white with big black patch”), has been considered as a good material or model in studying animal melanin synthesis mechanism. In this paper, MC1Rgene was cloned and sequenced, and its expression profile in the four body color patterns ( “whole red”, “whole red with big black patch”, “whole white” and “whole white with big black patch”) and tissues were also analyzed in Oujiang color common carp. The result showed that the full length cDNA of MC1R was 1 914 bp, containing a 5′un translated region (UTR) of 637 bp, a 3′-UTR of 311 bp and an open reading frame (ORF) of 966 bp. This gene has only one exon encoding 321 amino acids and predicting 7 transmembrane domains. There were 98% nucleotide similarity with Carassius auratus and 93% similarity with Danio rerio. However, Only one nucleotide nonsense mutation (C/G) in the coding region was found among different color patterns, indicating the same amino acid sequence among them. The result of qRT PCR indicated that the expression of MC1R in eyes was significantly higher (P<0.05) than that in skin, muscles, gills, kidney, bladder, heart and liver. It was surprising that there was no significant expression difference among the different color patterns (P＞0.05). This finding showed that MC1Rgene is not a determinant factor in controlling color patterns of Oujiang color common carp,and it is necessary to conduct further studies in other color related genes or factors.