Novel alpha haemoglobin haplotypes in horses

Summary. Four minor haplotypes that produce abnormal haemoglobin phenotypes in horses have been characterized. Two of them, Allb and V, are copy number variants‐with, respectively, one and three α genes instead of the normal complement of two. The AIIa and C haplotypes, on the other hand, each have two α genes but, as a result of probable gene conversions, they now encode identical, though haplotype specific, globins. Two out of 60 unrelated and phenotypically normal horses studied had an unusual triplicated rearrangement in the embryonic η‐gene locus. Each of these variants appears to have been produced by aberrant recombination events.