is more intense on the outward-facing side of the hair shaft and lighter underneath. In the darker areas, where the primitive markings occur, the hair shaft is of uniform color. One of the researchers involved in the study said it could be called a "microscopic spotting pattern". This phenomenon is new to science and has not been observed in rodents, primates, or carnivores. The location of TBX3 expression may also determine the striping pattern of zebras. Non-dun alleles There are two forms of non-dun color, non-dun1 and non-dun2, caused by different mutations. Non-dun1 horses have minimally-expressed primitive markings, while non-dun2 horses do not. Prior to domestication of the horse, dun, non-dun1, and the leopard complex are thought to have been the wild type modifiers of the base colors bay and black for wild horses. It is thought that the non-dun2 genetic mutation (as well as the development of chestnut base color) occurred after domestication. Ancient DNA from a horse that lived about 43,000 years ago, long before horses were domesticated, carried both dun and non-dun1 genes. The non-dun mutations appear to "disrupt the function of a transcriptional enhancer regulating TBX3 expression in a specific subset of hair bulb keratinocytes during hair growth." The region deleted in non-dun2 is predicted to include binding sites for the transcription factors ALX4 and MSX2, which are both known to be involved in hair follicle development. TBX3 was significantly downregulated in non-dun horses compared to dun horses, while the neighboring gene, TBX5, was expressed in about the same amount. In dun horses, the pattern of TBX3 expression mirrored the pattern of pigment deposition in the hair, that is, TBX3 was found wherever the pigment was not. TBX3 was not found in the hair cortex keratinocytes from non-dun horses, nor in those from the dorsal stripe of dun horses. However, all of the horses had a thin outer layer of the hair where TBX3 was expressed. Two markers of mature melanocytes, KIT and MITF, were found only in the pigmented areas of the hair. This indicates that the hair follicles of dun and non-dun horses have different distributions of pigment producing cells. KITLG encodes KIT ligand, a molecule required for melanocyte migration and survival in the skin and hair follicle. Keratinocytes expressing KITLG were found all the way around the hair in non-dun horses, but only on the pigmented side in dun horses. The region where