eeji

What is the best way to prove or disprove a potential new gene? It has already been proven to be dominant and gives a certain phenotype, BUT there already exists a dominant gene that produces the same/very similar (depending on who you talk to) phenotype. This 'new' thing needs to be either proved or disproved as being on a different locus, and if it is on the same locus needs to be proved or disproved to be a new allele. Please excuse the terminology, I'm new to anything more in depth than predicting genotype/phenotype outcomes so I hope it makes sense!

Is there any "correct" way to note possible genotypes that a given phenotype might be without having to write a long list? eg. an animal shows two distinct traits, lets say albino (recessive) and funky-pattern (dominant). We have no way of knowing if that animal is heterozygous or homozygous funky-pattern so the genotype could be either aaaa FFFF or aaaa F+FF If an animal has several dominant traits the list of possible genotype will soon get very large.