Analogous Conditions in Other Animals
The MATP gene is highly conserved, especially among mammals. The human MATP gene is 82% identical to the mouse MATP gene, 79% identical to the rat MATP gene, 35% to the zebrafish version, and 30% identical to the fruitfly MATP gene. The gene is best known in humans as being the location of a mutation that results in human type IV oculocutaneous albinism (OCA4). Type IV oculocutaneous albinism, like other types of human albinism, results in hypopigmentation of the skin and eyes, with increased rates of skin cancer and reduced visual acuity. None of these effects are associated with the equine cream gene. Other human MATP polymorphisms result in normal pigment variations, specifically fair skin, light eyes, and light hair in Caucasian populations.
A polymorphism on the mouse MATP gene is known to be the cause of the underwhite coat color phenotype. The phenotype was first identified in the 1960s, and since then has been mapped successfully. Affected individuals have a reduction in eye and coat pigmentation, and irregularly shaped melanosomes.
Read more about this topic: Cream Gene, Inheritance and Expression
Famous quotes containing the words analogous, conditions and/or animals:
“You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.”
—Larry McMurtry (b. 1936)
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)