bumblebee?

Homozygous - means a pair of identical genes. These may be two identical normal genes or two identical mutant genes. This is how a Super is made. pair or Pastel genes makes a super pastel.

Heterozygous - means a pair of non-identical alleles. Alleles are different versions of the same gene. The usual case is a normal allele paired with a changed (mutant) allele. An individual that is heterozygous for a codominant mutant gene does not look normal and does not look like an individual that is homozygous for the codominant mutant gene. This is like a normal pastel since it will have 1 normal and 1 pastel.

Since each Parent will always pass just 1 of a gene pair the babies end up with 2, 1 from mom and 1 from dad. This gives the Baby 2 alleles or each gene.

M= mutant gene N=Normal gene.

Mom has MM and dad has NN. Mom will pass 1 M and dad 1 N. giving baby MN.

If said Mutant gene was a pastel. then mom would be a super pastel, dad would be a normal and babie would be a pastel.

You can do this with each gene like spider, lesser, mojave, pastel, and so on....

Hope this helps.. lol.. I think I confused my self writing this!

Hi,

See if this post explains it all clearly.


dr del

Subdriven, your explanation is great except that (just to be nit-picky! :rolleyes: ) the convention in basic Mendelian genetics is to use the same letter to designate all alleles on a given locus, with an uppercase letter assigned to a dominant or co-dominant allele and lowercase assigned to a recessive allele. For example:

Albino:

A = Wild-type (produces normal pigment)
a = albino mutant (does not produce normal pigment)

AA = Non-het albino wild-type
Aa = Het albino
aa = Albino

Pastel:

P = Pastel
p = Wild-type

Pp = Pastel
PP = Super pastel


... It can get a lot more complicated than that, of course, but I'll spare you :rofl:

lol thanks.. wasn't trying to do a full square or go even more complicated then I did.. just thought that would be simple to understand that way... :P