Vend's genetics training!

okay only vend should be able to see this, but if you're not vend please don't post. Thank you. :3

Okay! First things first, I'm going to give you some genetic terms and I want you to look them up and then explain them in your own words. If you don't understand any of them, feel free to ask questions at any time.

Please define these words:
- homozygous
- heterozygous
- allele
- genotype
- phenotype

As we go through the lessons, I'll be adding a link to this first post so that you can quickly get from one lesson to the next if you need to revisit it for any reason. :3

Completed lessons

Lessons to complete
punnett squares and black factor
dilutes
tabbies (part 1: general)
tabbies (part 2: detailed)
white spotting/solid white
red factor
silvering
C locus
shorthair/longhair fur types
Laperm/Wirehair fur types
Russian/Sphinx hairless fur types
Rex fur types
deformities
wildcat hybrids

optional lessons (after the test)
golden tabby/chinchilla silvering
f1-f5 hybrids
- - -
Abyssinians/Somalis
dilute modifier/refusing/Glitter gene
charcoal/snow bengals

Perf!!

Okay, now last thing I'll explain before getting to the real meat is punnett squares! We use punnett squares a LOT in genetics, but once you get good, usually you'll do it in your head. :3

Black factor

Okay, meat time!

The first part is called, as you now know, is black factor. Why black? Because black is the most dominant. There are three colors in black factor. Black (B_) > chocolate (b_) > cinnamon (b¹b¹).

Now, for genetic diversity (which is what we strive for), we always assume the dominant partner (like say black) to carry the recessive partner's color (like say chocolate)

So say if it was a black x chocolate pairing, the punnett squares would look like this:

B b
b Bb bb
b Bb bb

So we'd get black (Bb -- which is actually black carrying chocolate {genotype}, but just write black {as in, just write the phenotypes}), and we'd get chocolate (bb).

If you have any questions, ask at any point and I'll answer them.

In the meantime, if you understand, try out these litters:

black x black

chocolate x cinnamon

cinnamon x black

So the black factor alleles just look like that. We use capital letters to mean dominant, and lower case to indicate recessive. No single allele is more than two characters long (ex. b1, ca, cs). The underlines for the black and chocolate are just to indicate that the second allele doesn't matter as much.

So black could be BB (homozygous), or black could be Bb (black carrying chocolate), or Bb1 (black carrying cinnamon)

Likewise, chocolate could be bb (homozygous), or bb1 (chocolate carrying cinnamon)

Because cinnamon is the MOST recessive of the black factor, cinnamon cannot carry anything but itself. So therefore, cinnamon can only be b1b1

cinnamon's alleles are often shown as b¹, or (less often as*) b1. It doesn't matter which you use, as long as there is a lower case 'b' and a '1' after it.

*=honestly, though it's just the lazy way to write it but I use it because it's less confusing to me ;)

Long story short, just think about them as identifiers or labels if that helps. :3

-------------

So blue is actually a dilute. We haven't quite got to dilutes yet (so don't worry about them for now), but if you meant to say chocolate, then yes, chocolate is recessive to black. For genetic diversity, we assume the parents to carry each others' recessive genes.

This means in a black x chocolate litter, we would assume the black to carry chocolate, so that we can get chocolate as an answer. As for the chocolate, since it is recessive to black (and therefore cannot carry black), we would just assume the chocolate to be homozygous.

If a black was paired with a cinnamon, then the black would be assumed to carry cinnamon.

Any other questions? Are the answers you've been given satisfactory?

bumpths!

@vend