Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose. The sh…
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose. The shine, or bioluminescence, is the result of a mutation in a single gene. Geneticists at the North Pole are interested in this gene, so they construct a pedigree for Rudolph and Clarice and their descendants. This tree is shown above. Circles are XX females; squares are XY males. Shaded individuals have bioluminescent noses; unshaded individuals have wild-type non-bioluminescent noses. Bioluminescence appears to be to the wild-type, non-bioluminescent nose. The gene that determines nose bioluminescence appears to be . If this were a real population of reindeer, why would bioluminescence have appeared?