The White mutations occur at the KIT location, and yes, that mutates quite frequently It’s responsible for Roan, Tobiano, Sabino1 (and possibly other unidentified SB mutations), and of course a lot of White mutations
I don’t know enough genetics to know what causes one location to mutate more than others.
There is a brief paper published last year that may explain the loci. I glanced at it rather than read it carefully so it may not help.
And…it won’t let me simply copy the link. Because. Here’s the info to find it if you want.
Brief Report
Coat Color Roan Shows Association with KIT Variants
and No Evidence of Lethality in Icelandic Horses
Katharina Voß 1
, Julia Tetens 1
, Georg Thaller 1 and Doreen Becker 2,*
1
Institute of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, University of Kiel, Olshausenstraße 40, 24098 Kiel, Germany;
kvoss@tierzucht.uni-kiel.de (K.V.); juliatetens@tierzucht.uni-kiel.de (J.T.);
gthaller@tierzucht.uni-kiel.de (G.T.)
2
Institute of Genome Biology, Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology, Wilhelm-Stahl-Allee 2,
18196 Dummerstorf, Germany
I saw that one. There’s a cool amount of work done on this gene in several species, which I didn’t realize! They say it has the highest allelic heterogeneity seen in any domestic animal. I had some downtime and actually ran the sequence through a tandem repeat identifier, and it didn’t ID anything. I think Haase et al. (2009) put it super well:
“The equine KIT gene shows a remarkable allelic diversity. Obviously, the striking coat colour phenotypes of the horses and the dominant inheritance increase the chances that spontaneous mutations in this gene are recognized in the first place. Therefore, the observed allelic diversity does not necessarily implicate a particularly high mutation rate.”
I think it’s super cool to have a white horse doing her job so well.
Love this filly…
In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw her photo, was that she reminded me of Painting Seattle. I used to sell and deliver hay to Dalene, almost 20 years ago, and we would visit the mares and foals, and move them from breeding barn to pasture (or vice versa) if needed. Painting Seattle was my favorite foal of all of Dalenes… and a full brother to Colorfull Seattle, the dam of Saluki.
Sodashi wins big. 2000 meters in 1:59.5. If I did the math correctly that 2000 m is only about 38 feet short of a mile and a quarter. Pretty fast.
So cool. She is so beautiful running with the other horses. Congrats to Sodashi!
She looks pink in that photo. 
A little sidetrack but still Japanese racing.
Not worth starting a thread of it’s own, but this lady jockey can ride! Very impressive.
And he kicks. Red ribbon in his tail.
No kidding! I noticed that many people were removing themselves from the trajectory of that horses hind end. Some were not, and that was frightening.
Well done though, and respect to the jock and to the leader, for keeping the horse as under control as it could be kept.
It seemed to me that another, less sympathetic rider, would have had that horse go up and over…
Day-um.
Sodashi won Best 3 Y/O filly of 2021 in Japan. (JRA awards)
Very tactful rider. Gotta love TBs.
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