100% hets...

[geckogirls]

Okay kind of stupid question here...
If you breed two geckos that are 100% het for the same gene will they produce just that morph? Or what? Say I breed two 100% het RAPTORS both normals, what will they produce? Also if I breed a 100% het RAPTOR to something that is not het for that gene what will the offspring actually be? 50% het? or only some will be het for that gene?? Thanks

 

[elphani]

Raptor is not only one Gen. At least there are three rezessiv Gens: Tremper Albino, Tremper Patternless and ruby Eyes. Then there are a lot of Gens responsible for the orange colour and the stripe.

When you have a het. Raptor, that means that one Parent was a Raptor. But for every single of these Gens you have 50% possibility that its given to the babies. So the possibility that all of these are given to the Baby is 0.5 x0.5 x 0.5 what makes 0.125 or 12.5%! But that ist only the possibility for a het. raptor baby (from one parent). The possibility to get a Raptor baby ist 0.125 x 0.125 - makes 1.56%!!! So you have to breede a lot Babies to get (statistically) one Raptor.

If you look at just one Gen, for example the Tremper Albino, there is a 50% chance to give it to the baby. 0.5 (dad) x 0.5 (mum) makes 0.25 = 25% for an Albino hatchling. 50% are het. for Albino and 25% got no Albino Gen.

If you breed normals het . Raptor you can have normals, Eclipse, Patterless, Albino, Albino Patternless (Aptor), Raptor, and a lot of them are hets.

 

[Mel&Keith]

To help clarify something in Sandra's reply: the "patternless" in RAPTORs is not the simple recessive Patternless gene. It's a combination of Stripe and Reverse Stripe genes that cause the RAPTOR hatch without pattern. If you search though past threads about RAPTOR genetics you should find lots of the answers you're looking for. It's pretty confusing stuff when you've just started learning basic genetics!

 

[okapi]

Raptors are a combination morph consisting of tremper albino, eclipse, carrot head, carrot tail, tangerine, hypomelanisim, and 'patternless stripe'. They usually carry the jungle trait as well. So for learning simple genetics, Raptors are a horrible selection. It would be easier to start with the basics, like simple one gene traits ("on or off" traits.)

Heres some info to get you started:
http://paulsagereptiles.com/LeopardGenetics.htm
http://www.vmsherp.com/LearningCenter.htm

A thread with Raptor info:
http://www.geckoforums.net/showthread.php?t=12930

A thread with genetic info:
http://www.geckoforums.net/showthread.php?t=12897

A good book would be:
The Herpetoculture of Leopard Geckos

 

[okapi]

Okay kind of stupid question here...
If you breed two geckos that are 100% het for the same gene will they produce just that morph? Or what?

There is a tool called a punnett square in which you put one parents genetics on top, and the other parents genetics on the left side. Then inbetween you cross the letters that represent the gene in question to get percentages.

Lets try blizzard, a simple one gene recessive trait. A dominant gene is expressed with an uppercase letter "B" and a recessive gene is expressed with a lowercase "b". Since each parent is a het, they are "Bb".

.....B...b
B..BB..Bb
b..Bb..bb

As you can see, out of four offspring, one is BB, two are Bb, and one is bb.

So there is a 25% chance that the pair will produce a blizzard when they have four eggs. They have a 50% chance of producing hets, and a 25% chance of producing normals that dont have the gene.

If we hatch out 4 babies from this pairing and one is blizzard and 3 are not, then we label the nonblizzards as 66% hets. Because the square told us that 2 out of the 3 nonblizzards are hets, so we divide the 2/3 to get 66%. Basically that says that there is a 66% chance that either of the three nonblizzards are hets. We dont know which actually are and which one isnt, so we consider them all to be possible hets.