What are multiple alleles? Is there dominance in multiple alleles?
Multiple alleles is the phenomenon in which the same gene has more than two different alleles (in normal mendelian inheritance the gene has only two alleles). Obviously these alleles combine in pairs to form the genotypes. In multiple alleles relative dominance among the alleles may exist. A typical example of multiple alleles is the inheritance of the ABO blood group system, in which there are three alleles (A, B or O, or IA, IB and i). IA is dominant over i, which is recessive in relation to the other IB allele. IA and IB lack dominance between themselves. Another example is the color of rabbit fur, conditioned by four different alleles (C, Cch, Ch and c). In this case the dominance relations are C > Cch > Ch > c (the symbol > means “dominates over”).
