Recio wrote:You are rigth saying that Blue-1 and Blue-2 should show the same phenotype but we should keep in mind that the neighbour genes of each Blue are different, and whenever a gene acting on the final colour phenotype is located near one of the Blue genes (linked), it will be inherited as a single unit, and the apparent final phenotype could be different.
Recio, welcome back! Where have you been hiding out?
Although in principle what your are saying makes a lot of sense, I don't think I necessarily agree with everything for the specific example. The blue gene doesn't produce the blue colour, but rather influences the production of psittacin (or making the psittacin molecule ineffective). And with psittacin production considered later in the metabolic pathway, after melanin and feather structure has been put in place, I don't think it will influence the
base blue colour resulting from melanin and feather nano-structure. However, the "apparent psittacin" (say an inefficient one, but not completely removed one) deposited is another matter (the deep mutation might fit in here), where your point is true. One last thought, when we consider blue1 and blue2 to be allelic like in the budgerigar (and not at different locii), then the neighbouring genes will be the same for both blue types.
Thoughts?