Skip to main content

Due to decreasing use over the years, I have decided to disable the forum functionality of the site.

Forums will still be available to view but new posts are no longer allowed.

Barr Bodies in Horses?

Alright bare with me here, it's pushing to 1:30am and I've been cramming for my Bio class the last week or so. One of the last chapters we discuss (of course I love this one, and of course they make we wait till the end of the semester to enjoy something in that class! LOL) is on genetics, very basic stuff. But we were talking about Barr Bodies the other day, and how they relate to cats (calicos and tortoise shells) and I got to thinking about horses. Thats pretty much how I try to get by in that class, professor says one thing, and to remember it I relate it to Horses some how >_> hey, it works. In the case of Barr bodies, as I understand it we only need one X to tell us we are female, however we inherit 2 X chromosomes. In development one X chromosome will tell the other X to shut off, that turned off X is now the Barr Body. And if I remember it correctly, not every cell will have the same X turned off. The concept of having clusters of cells with different X chromosomes made me think of those somatic mutations (black patches) on horses, and wondered if that had anything to do with it. And then Goats post of that Icelandic(?) in the patterns thread made me go back to the Calico cats. Where in Calicos and Torties both X chromosomes are active, and there is no barr body. I wasn't sure if it would relate to horses or not, because in class the professor explained it as if the color was sex linked to the X chromosome, so that XB was Black, and Xb was orange, and if a cat inherited XBXb and if I remember correctly Calico is sex linked, tho on the rare occasion males can get it to if they are XXY and both X's are active.

Monsterpony Sat, 04/23/2011 - 12:22

I think that Barr Bodies would only affect coat color if there were any color genes located on the sex chromosomes.