I know what you mean about the boa people, Joe. I've gone a few rounds with them on kingsnake.com. There are a few good people, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joejr14
Q: What is meant by a gene being dominant?
A: A gene that is expressed phenotypically in heterozygous or homozygous individuals.
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It would be worth adding something like this:
"Dominant" either implies or expressly states a comparison with another gene. If the comparison is unstated, it is always to the wild type allele. Example: In ringneck doves, blond is a recessive mutant gene (meaning recessive to the wild type allele). Blond is also dominant to the white allele.
Something similar should go into the definition of "recessive" and "codominant".
Some minor points include changing the spelling from "co-dominant" to "codominant" and using superscripts in the gene symbols instead of putting the superscript and base symbol all on one line.
It would be worth adding "wild type" and "characteristic", too.
Q: What is meant by wild type?
A: The wild type phenotype is the most common phenotype found in the wild population. The wild type allele is the allele at each locus that is required to produce the wild type phenotype. There are thousands of loci in the corn snake genome, and there is a wild type allele at each locus. If a gene is not expressly identified, it is assumed to be wild type.
If anything that occurs in the wild is wild type, then anerythristic corns are wild type.
The "most common phenotype" avoids that pitfall and drops Miamis and Okeetees out of wild type, too.
Q: What is meant by a characteristic?
A: A characteristic is anything in the phenotype that differs from the wild type phenotype.