Research advice desired!

[LCReptiles]

Ok, so I am doing a research project for Honors Biology at college. I talked to the professor this morning and I intend to do something with recessive/dominant genes with regards to our favorite geckos. I need some advice here.. I've been out of the "game" for a bit on the geckos, and haven't done a whole bunch of reading yet on the current cutting edge morphs coming out.

So I'm asking, would you recommend something along the lines of selective line breeding being the cause of increased tail kinks?

Or maybe something more focused on how much are genetics a factor when it comes to skin color/pattern etc. This may seem like a bit of a silly one to me, but when I had to leave the herp community in 2006 carrot tails were still the rage and to my understanding if you took a male and female that had significant orange color to their tail the more likely you were to produce young that had increased coloring. Again, this may have been debunked while I was away, but I haven't seen anything saying that. The premise I'm thinking about is if you compare them to a man and a woman, both with blue eyes, your children won't have BLUE-ER eyes... or will they?

Anyway, just asking for generalized opinion here. Let's hear it!

 

[sunshinegeckos]

I would do something more focused on how genetics play a role in the color/pattern of geckos and how mixing genetics can cause certain colors & patterns. Just my opinion. Good Luck!

 

[RampantReptiles]

My question is what exactly is the research project? What were you asked to do?

 

[LCReptiles]

I was not asked to do anything. It's a Biology 101 course, Chapter 10 is on genetics. I must submit a project/presentation that I am going to do outside the realm of the normal classwork for honors credit. I talked to my professor this morning, she liked the idea of using geckos and the way dominant and recessive genes play a role in morphs... now I just have to narrow that down into something manageable.

 

[lillith]

I would take an example of known recessives (any albino strain, by itself).
Discuss how hets work, and show some lineage of albino to non-albino, their heterozygous offspring, and how to create new homozygous animals from these hets.

Alternately, you could discuss the polygenetic traits such as carrottails, and how selectively line breeding for increased expression of the genes involved works.

Eye color in humans is polygenetic as well, there are some dominant and recessive alleles in play, and I guess you could technically say that human eye color is sort of co-dom. Brown+blue may make brown or blue, but hazel is sometimes more likely. And that's a really bad example. If anyone out there knows all the details on human eye alleles, I'm all ears. I've always wondered how many variables there are...

If this is Bio 101, I'd say almost any well documented gecko breeding project would suffice.
Even at an honors level, giving detailed descriptions of what we do should thrill any instructor of biology.

 

[RampantReptiles]

Ok so you could talk about a few different morphs like enigma's which are dominant. How they alter the pattern and the eyes to make them look different. Mack snows which are co-dominant and also alter pattern and eyes. And any of the recessive morphs.

I do like your other ideas but the tail kink thing would be hard to prove as I dont think there is any scientific studies proving this phenomenon is genetic.
The carrot tail thing would be better.

Do you have ron trempers book? Herpetoculture of leopard geckos. Some really useful information in there about morphs and even about skin pigmentation and things of that nature. That book could be a good resource.

 

[LCReptiles]

Alternately, you could discuss the polygenetic traits such as carrottails, and how selectively line breeding for increased expression of the genes involved works.

Thumbs up for this. Thanks guys. I believe this is the direction I will go. :main_thumbsup::main_thumbsup::main_thumbsup::main_cool3:

 

[prhutchi]

data collection suggestion...

It wasn't clear to me whether your project requires any actual data collection or not, but if this is the case I have a suggestion that seems like it would be quite feasible. If data collection is not a part of your project and you are merely presenting on a topic than the rest of this post won't be extremely useful to you.

We know that expression of the "carrot" increases as a result of line-breeding, but at what rate? Can you predict probability of the various amounts of carrot coloration that covers the tail, say... from a dorsal view, if you know the starting percentages of the parents? What about the F1, F2, and F3 populations of the subsequent offspring? How long would a breeder have to line-breed until he had a 50% chance of getting a 90% carrot-covered tail?

Your data collection could be as simple as posting on message boards such as this and having people post images of dorsal views of their carrot tail geckos and including what generation they are. This is actually a small scale example of how the scientific community operates both commercially and in academia.

Best of luck

p.s. - obviously you would need members who have multiple generations of line-bred carrot tails. If this seems like too much work for a breeder to help you out with you might entice them by offering to make your data analysis available to them.

 

[acpart]

Here's another possible idea which I've actually been thinking about for awhile: blizzard geckos are considered to be simple recessive, but all of my blizzard hets have speckles (small spots as opposed to the larger ones). I've been wondering for awhile whether the blizzard trait could possibly be co-dominant with the "blizzard" being the super form and the "speckled" look being the non-super form. There should be a way to collect data to prove this out by questioning blizzard gecko breeders.

Aliza

 

[ElapidSVT]

the most helpful research that needs doing is: how is the enigma syndrome related to the enigma mutation?

at least that's what many of us might really like to know.

 

[artgecko]

Some good ideas here. Since this is for an introductory Biology class, you probably won't be able to do actual experiments or collect data. I would do a compare/contrast type paper. Compare and contrast recessives (albino, eclipse), Dominant (Enigma) co-dominant/incomplete dominant (Mack Snow) and line bred/polygenic traits like carrot tail.
It might be easier to fill out the paper discussing multiple types of pattern traits than focusing on a single type.
Best of luck with your project!

 

[RampantReptiles]

Some good ideas here. Since this is for an introductory Biology class, you probably won't be able to do actual experiments or collect data. I would do a compare/contrast type paper. Compare and contrast recessives (albino, eclipse), Dominant (Enigma) co-dominant/incomplete dominant (Mack Snow) and line bred/polygenic traits like carrot tail.
It might be easier to fill out the paper discussing multiple types of pattern traits than focusing on a single type.
Best of luck with your project!

Thats exactly what I was trying to get at

 

[prhutchi]

Some good ideas here. Since this is for an introductory Biology class, you probably won't be able to do actual experiments or collect data. I would do a compare/contrast type paper. Compare and contrast recessives (albino, eclipse), Dominant (Enigma) co-dominant/incomplete dominant (Mack Snow) and line bred/polygenic traits like carrot tail.
It might be easier to fill out the paper discussing multiple types of pattern traits than focusing on a single type.
Best of luck with your project!

It really all depends on the scope of the assignment. In the original post, LC references a "research project", not a paper. So... LC you might get more relevant feedback from all of us here if you clarified whether you are expected to conduct a project (i.e. collect data) or whether you are simply reviewing a topic for either paper or presentation. In either case, anything that would take you more than a semester, regardless of how cool the topic, is irrelevant.

Oh and sorry I had geared my earlier response to a high school student (I automatically associated the word "honors" with a high school class) but after re-reading your post I see that it is a college class... my apologies.

cheers!
-PRH

 

[LZRDGRL]

If you need some research publications to cite from, you're welcome to look at my Education page; maybe there's something you can use.

Chrissy

 

[LCReptiles]

Thanks to everyone for the help and the support. After discussing the idea with my professor here is how things turned out:

Scholarly paper explaining how polygenic traits in leopard geckos (i.e. stripes, hypomelanism, and color morphs) are line bred to increase the amount of the desired trait expressed, and how they compare/contrast to standard dominant/recessive gene expression. Approximately 12-15 pages in length (double-spaced, size 10-12 font size), sources properly cited throughout paper using MLA format (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/); primary sources should be 3 current Biology-related scientific journal articles (published within past 5 years); supplement with at least five additional sources. Final grade in the course must be at least a B in order to receive honors credit.

Jeff