Reptile & Amphibian Forums

On another forum about pitbull dogs a man came on and was talking about the Merle gene( for those who don't know what merle is it is the blotching or muted coloring of patches on an animal.) Anyway he started out saying that it was a dominate gene(Only 1 parent needs it to reproduce it) When I proved him wrong on this he goes on to say that it was also a dominate recessive gene. Isn't that like an oximoron? Does that mean that only 1 parent can carry the gene and pass it on? Is there really such a gene? Just checking on some of my facts.
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Allison Maynard

From what I've found on the web, merle is caused by a dominant (not "dominate" mutant gene, though possibly "codominant" might be a better description. A dog is merle if it has at least one merle mutant gene. Mating a merle dog to a non-merle dog will produce at least some merle pups. Homozygous merle dogs have two merle mutant genes and seem to show a more extreme expression of merle than the heterozygous merle dogs (with a merle mutant gene paired with a normal gene).

There is no such thing as a dominant recessive mutant gene.

Dominant and codominant mutant genes are found in many species, including humans and ball pythons.

Paul Hollander
merle web page

The software stuck a smiley face in my post where I intended a close parenthesis character.

Paul Hollander