The Whalebone Y mutation
Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2019 7:45 pm
Does anyone have any idea what it actually changed? Seems to me it must have conferred some benefit to have taken over as completely as it did.
vineyridge wrote:Does anyone have any idea what it actually changed? Seems to me it must have conferred some benefit to have taken over as completely as it did.
It's a single base deletion in the hyperpolymorphic YE3 region, per Wallner et al. 2013. Effect on fitness, if any, was and is unknown. See second para in the 'Potential and perspectives for individual MSY haplotyping in horses' section of the report published online last week.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42640-w
Even if it did offer some advantage to Whalebone's tribe it obviously doesn't explain the subsequent expansion patterns therein, Nearco's modern sireline dominance in the TB for one example.