Do hets pass down?

[SnowFoxx]

I'm looking at buying some females, and possibly another male, to breed in a few years. I already have an Amel male, het for probably nothing, but who knows? I'd rather hatch out morphs that are het for only one or two things, rather than normals that are het for evrything under the sun.

So, my plan is to get a Blizzard for my Amel male, so I can get some Amels het for Charcoal. We'll see what else...I haven't decided yet.

My question is on breeding him to a het. I know someone who will hatch some Caramels het for Butter and Amber this year. If bred to my Amel, I expect I will get Normals, het for Amel and Caramel, but will they also be het for Butter and Amber, or just 66% het for those, or what?

Also, If I breed a snow het butter to a motley het Butter, I will get all Butters, het for snow motley, right? Then if I breed those together (normal het amel, caramel, 66% butter, amber + butter het snow motley) what the heck would that equal!?!?

LOL! I'm starting to like this corn genetics thing...it's like a puzzle!

- Victoria

 

[drizzt_19]

My question is on breeding him to a het. I know someone who will hatch some Caramels het for Butter and Amber this year. If bred to my Amel, I expect I will get Normals, het for Amel and Caramel, but will they also be het for Butter and Amber, or just 66% het for those, or what?

If you bred the caramel het butter & amber to your amel, you would get the following:

25.00%, Amelanistic, Het for Amber
25.00%, Normal,Het for Butter, Het for Hypomel
25.00%, Amelanistic, Het for Caramel
25.00%, Normal, Het for Butter

Also, If I breed a snow het butter to a motley het Butter, I will get all Butters, het for snow motley, right? Then if I breed those together (normal het amel, caramel, 66% butter, amber + butter het snow motley) what the heck would that equal!?!?

No, you would not get all butters unless you are very , very lucky..

Anyhow the offspring from the snow het butter X motley het butter would be as follows:


25.00%, Amelanistic, Het for Anery, Het for Caramel, Het for Motley
25.00%, Normal,Het for Butter, Het for Anery, Het for Motley
12.50%, Butter, Het for Anery, Het for Motley
12.50%, Caramel, Het for Snow, Het for Motley
12.50%, Amelanistic, Het for Anery, Het for Motley
12.50%, Normal,Het for Snow, Het for Motley

These are the average results..Result vary depending mainly upon how lucky you are...

HTH,

drizzt

 

[Serpwidgets]

I'll try a different approach to the answer...

Do hets pass down?

Understanding the answer is easier when you first understand the question.

The answer lies in the definition of "het." Each animal has two sets of chromosomes, one inherited from the mother, one from the father. When it is "het" for a trait, it is because the gene pair inherited for that trait consists of two different "versions" of the gene.

So Amel X Normal produces hets because the offspring inherit the "amel" (non-melanin-producing "non-functional" version) gene from the amel, and the normal (melanin-producing "functional" version) gene from the normal.

(Because the process of making melanin only needs one copy of the "functional" gene, the het offspring do, as you know, produce melanin and thus look normal. So we like to distinguish them from other normals by saying they are het, because otherwise you wouldn't know if they are.)

Ok, so having an idea of what "het" means, we can look at how this affects its offspring:

When this "het" animal breeds, it can pass to its offspring only one half of its genetic code. It does this via sperm or egg, and each sperm/egg cell has half of the genetic code from the animal which produced it. (Otherwise the amount of genetic material in every animal would double every generation, imagine that after a few thousand generations! )

Some of what's passed down is genes it got from its mother, the rest is from its father. (ooh look he has your eyes and my nose, etc.) So a corn that's het for amel can normally only pass down either the normal or the amel gene, but not both. On the average, it will tend to pass down the "functional" version of the gene to half of its offspring, and the "non-functional" version to the other half.

What that translates to is this: when breeding a corn that's het for amel to one that's normal (and not het for amel) half of the offspring will be het. The other half will not be het. So, no, hets don't pass down all the time.

And breeding a normal het amel to another normal het amel, well:
Half of them will get the amel gene from the father.
Half of them will get the amel gene from the mother.

This is like flipping two coins, say a penny and a nickel, and the results on one coin are independent of the other coin. Let's pretend the "amel" gene is heads:
If you get both heads (half chance times half chance = one fourth chance = 25% chance) that individual will be amelanistic.
If you get both tails (same chance as above) the offspring will be normal-looking and not het.
If you get one heads one tails (the remaining, which is then a 50% chance) then they will look normal but be het.

So you get 4 results:
Heads Heads (amel)
Heads Tails (het)
Tails Heads (het)
Tails Tails (not het)

And since you can visually pick out the amels, what you have remaining for the normals is 3 possibilities, and two of them are het. If you add that up, it means that the normals from a het-to-het breeding for any given trait have a 2/3rds chance of being het for that trait. This is where "66% het" comes from.

I'd also recommend my genetics tutorial, since it illustrates things a bit better and goes into more detail. Genetics stuff is pretty interesting. Have fun.

 

[Serpwidgets]

Almost forgot this point, hehe

I know someone who will hatch some Caramels het for Butter and Amber this year. If bred to my Amel, I expect I will get Normals, het for Amel and Caramel, but will they also be het for Butter and Amber, or just 66% het for those, or what?

Sounds like they're breeding a Butter to an Amber, which would produce such a clutch. The other part of corn genetics that's important to know is the names of combined traits:
Butter is the combination of both Amel and Caramel.
Amber is the combination of both Hypo and Caramel.

(Thus when you breed them, all the babies are Caramel, and they are all het for Amel and Hypo, or "het for Butter and Amber" depending on which you prefer.)

It helps to break combo-morphs down into components, because you can then see that what you are breeding is:
Amel (assuming your amel isn't het for caramel or hypo) X Caramel het Amel and het Hypo.

So, what you will actually see with your eyes when they hatch is this:
Half of them will be Amels, the other half will be normal.

And you'll know their genotypes or possible genotypes:
All will be het Caramel.
Half will be het Hypo.

 

[SnowFoxx]

Serpwidgets, you're my hero I'm trying really hard with this genetics thing, but I'm not the shrpest knife, if you know what I mean. It would help tremendously if I knew what combos lead to what. Think I'll cruise on over to the Serpenco site and see what I can see - thanks for the tip! I tried your tutorial, but it was a little bit over my head the first time (of course, I *was* right in the middle of my second night shift out of three when I read it, so I'll cut myself some slack.)

- Victoria