April 7

DRACONIA KEEP where Magic and Dreams Become Reality

April 7, 200

Mutations in the color of Horse Coats

A post I made on a list concerning Horse Coats:

You mention specifically white markings that can happen *after* domestication on animals. You also mention that mutations are thought to have happened later after the original dun color.

How do we know that those mutations are not still occurring? That alone would throw a wrench into *all* of the color genetics that we suspect at this time.

For example: My grandfather has a very terrible, disfiguring disease.*** It is a dominant gene, so my mother had a 50/50 % of getting it. (At the time, they didn't know it was hereditary.)

My mom got it. Then, *I* had a 50/50% chance of getting it. I didn't. Thank God.
My kids have the same chances of getting it as the children of anyone without the disease in his/her background, which is *NOT*, as you would think, zero.

Then, if the parent doesn't have the disease, how could his/her children get it?

Doctors and geneticists agree that a rather alarming proportion of people with this disease *DO NOT* get it through hereditary---they get it simply by a mutation that, unfortunately, is not all that uncommon. (Trust me, *anyone* having it is one too many! )

Who's to say that that same thing doesn't happen in horse colors? We can't. Therefore, we could study the bloodlines (which we *need* to, of course), but we can't say it *can't* happen.

Nature has a tendency to throw it in our faces if we do...<G>

Comments are always welcomed.

Tori

***Name of disease and information about it available upon request.