Genetics confusion - A resolution??

To those of you who are a bit confused about genetics, I pose this question.


What part of basic genetics is most difficult to grasp?

Are punnet squares hard to understand?

What would make it easier for the newbie person to understand recessive/co-dom combinations??

OO, good topic. When I started with snakes, I found it a little difficult to understand co-dominants and how they relate to good old recessive and dominant.

I think a lot of people believe that a dominant gene is more likely to be inherited than a recessive one.

I think the solution to understanding both of these areas is to understand genotypes (heterozygous and homozygous gene pairs) and how genotypes are inherited (one copy of each gene from each parent). Once you understand the underlying basics of how genes are inherited you can add mutation types like co-dominant and dominant to get to the appearances of the different genotypes.

I think the confusion happens when people try to jump to inheritance of phenotypes which varies from mutation type to mutation type, if they would just figure all the inheritances at the genotype level they could use the same rules always.

For example, pastel X normal produces 50% chance pastel eggs not because pastel is co-dominant but because a pastel is heterozygous for the pastel gene and het X normal produces 50% chance hets. Those hets just happen to look pastel because the mutation is co-dominant. But the same genotype inheritance also works for spider and albino, it's just the phenotype that varies by mutation type.

I think the biggest confusion comes with the names that are given to some of these combos.

Ive always been a believer of just calling the combos what they actually are, instead of giving them fancy names with more market appeal.

I mean, sure the name Lemon Blast sounds really cool, and has more market appeal than a "Pastel Pinstripe", and the same could be said for, example... Queen Bee vs "Pastel Lesser Spider", but I think alot could be said of the clarity of just calling them what they are.

And even more confusion comes into play where you have animals with different Phenotypes and similar, if not exact Genotypes...ESPECIALLY where the combos involving said Phenotypes are given a separate name, such as Black Pastels/Cinnies and the resulting combinations (ie... Silver Streak vs Sterling)

I realize that Im likely in the minority with my thinking, and that nothing is going to change cause lil' ol me thinks we should just call them what they are, but I just thought I would throw my opinion out there :)

Hey! I prefer to call them what they are in base morph thinking. Could you imagine if we follow the example people use for corn snake morphs? We'd have a bunch of anery whatamacallits... I find corn morphs so hard to keep in line.. lol

I think one confusing factor to newbies is that co-doms are really visible hets of the super form. Recessive morphs and supers are really the same formulas

Doms always stay the same.

Get your headaround that and it becomes easier

Does this help at all???

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=52847

My confusion was cleared greatly by the "Genetics for Dummies" pictorial on ballpythons.ca...from that, I was then able to jump to the meaty descriptions of squares on RDR and NERDs websites, for example, and described in the NERD and VPI BP books...

For me once I figured out Nodes it went OK. Before I figured that out I had trouble understanding why if you breed an Axanth and Albino together would you end up with Normal looking double hets. Yet when you breed those young back together you can get the snow. I kept leaving the middle step out. :colbert: One other thing that would be super helpful that I intend to do is create a cheat sheet that shows all Dominate in one column, all Co-dominate in another, and all recessive in another. I've found some, but most are incomplete becouse currently things are changing so fast in the industry with the discovery of different morphs that are not proven yet! It can take 3 to 4 years to prove a morph is not just an aberation.