Proving out a Het?

[unspecified42]

well Ill be honist. that link made me more confused then before. Like why is it when you put two 100% hets together the clutch is only 66% just like if you get 2 Homozygous that sites says the whole clutch would be Homozygous

Each snake has two genes for one allele, or trait.

"Homo" means "same." "Hetero" means "different."

Say we're talking about albinism. "A" will be wild-type/normal. "a" will be albino, which is recessive.

A homozygous animal will either be "AA" (total normal) or "aa" (albino). The got the same gene from each parent, and can ONLY pass on that gene.

So if you breed 2 homozygous animals- "aa" x "aa," 100% of the offspring will be albino. It's the only possible outcome.


However, if you have two heterozygous animals- "Aa" x "Aa," which would be two hets, you could get: AA, Aa, or aa.

So say we have a clutch of 4. 1 is albino, 1 is normal, 2 are hets (this isn't how it works, but for the sake of argument we'll say that's what we ended up with). It's obvious that the albino is "aa," otherwise it wouldn't be albino. However, you have 3 other snakes that look normal. Two are hets, but you don't know which two. So they call those normal-looking snakes "66% hets" because 66% (2/3) of them are heterozygous, but it's not guaranteed.