# New to genetics, and id like some...a lot of help



## jujubee18

Ok so I know the basic colors, and markings, and i know the basics of punnett squares, however I would like to figure out the exact "code" for each of my mice. I have already tried, and I jumped into it thinking i had some knowledge, and now im just...very discouraged. I bought my mice from a pet store so i have no clue what their back ground is, but some of them have had a litter and I was hoping out of litter we could find out what they are. Specifically i have a third generation now and id like to be able to figure it out by their parents and so on. I've never breed for show mice, they are all pets, so i expect the codes to be a little more messed up? ill post pictures of the generations, and tell you all their markings if they have any. I can use any information possible. I expect some information to be incomplete...
the grandfather is professor, he is what i believe a recessive yellow. He is without sootiness, he has a light spot on his stomach and a head spot....i think it may also be important to say he has a very small white ring around his stomach and i know he produced a yellow banned with one of my two "brindles" ill show later. black eyes. 








He reproduced with Brain, Who i believe is a broken cinnamon, wild, or something else...I am not curtain. Black eyes.








they produced these babies:
recessive yellow with exact same markings as his dad:








a self of brain's spot color. I'm wondering what it is. when i push her hair back she has a steely grey undercoat.








Secretes, The father of the next generation: He had three colors, black, with a head spot that consisted of both yellow and white. He also had a white spot on his tummy.








professor also bread with two other females who put their nest together, so i don't know who's is who's.
Tiger:who i heard is a brindle...she has stripes, and a golden color.








possum:who i also heard is possibly a brindle.. maybe a diluted brindle? I'm not sure if it is possible, but she has varied grey fur.








If they are both bridles i'm not sure it will really matter which mother produced the second generation mother.
Mojo: A broken black.









Mojo and Secretes produced an accidental litter of babies four of them are broken black, four are broken yellow, and four are black with head spots. I believe one of the black ones also has a couple random spots on its back. I really want to find out what these guys carry. every little detail is appreciated :]








Sorry if that a lot...but id really like some help. I'd like to start recording information, and being more "professional" instead of guessing at which pair will make cute babies. Before anyone freaks out i don't sell to pet shops. I give to good friends and families.


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## Autumn2005

When I was new to breeding mice, I did the exact same thing you did, and tried to figure everything out... It turned out to be a lot more complicated that I thought! Let's see, if the mice are all black eyes, then they must be P/P or P/p. If they ever produce pink eyed babies, then both parent would be P/p. As for the spotting, that is recessive, so if they show spots, they must be s/s. However, I think the headspot might be a different gene, and I think it's recessive, but I'm not sure.

Now, the RY mice must be e/e, and if you breed two non yellow parents and get yellow, both parents must be E/e. Black is pretty much the most dominant non-agouti color, as far as I know. The code for a black mouse will be a/a B* C* D* E* P*. We've already established that the mice are E/e. If you ever get a BEW or a PEW, then you know the genetics are C/c. If you get chocolates, they would be B/b. If you get blues, the parents must be D/d. If you get doves, they must be P/p.

Sorry, don't know if this helps. It gives me a headache trying to figure it out!


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## jujubee18

As for the eyes...Professor, Brain, and the brindles must have P/p because they have all reproduced pink eyed mice. The whole RY confused me because there are the brindles, and the recessive yellows, and i always wonder about the hidden colors behind them.. because you can get different colors of brindles. I'm definitely done with breeding any yellows, or brindles. They are way too confusing. If spotting is recessive and i just got a full litter of spotted babies...or at least some of them are spotted recessive because of the markings on the tails. then mojo and secretes must be a S/s s/s because if the head spot gene is different then mojo only has the recessive spot gene. and mojo has to be s/s because she is spotted, and all the babies have at least the recessive gene. as for the color...they had black and yellow which makes since because secretes had black and yellow markings...which i heard was kind of a weird happening. I was wondering about other colors popping up thought. like if Mojo and Secretes's parents parents were able to have chocolates or doves...will those colors pop up again in their genetics? and how to i write it all out? ive seen people write out a mouse's full string of genetics. does something come first? like eye color, markings, fur type, fur color....like in a certain order?


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## Jack Garcia

Generally, they're in alphabetical order: A/A B/B C/C D/D E/E P/P S/S Sa/Sa (an agouti who carries neither chocolate, C-dilutes, blue, yellow, spots, nor satin..those are the most common color and coat genes at play in US petstore mice).

Sometimes though you will see just the "main four" color alleles, A, B, C, and D listed.



Autumn2005 said:


> Black is pretty much the most dominant non-agouti color, as far as I know.


Ay, Avy, Ahvy, Aw, and at are all dominant to black. Black is next-to last on the agouti locus in terms of dominance (dominant only to extreme black).


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## Jack Garcia

By the way, I am in love with that egg carton photograph!


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## Autumn2005

Sorry, Jack, what I meant was that of all the a* colors, black is the most dominant. Meaning if we leave the a-locus aside, B* C* D* P* etc... equals black. I meant chocolates, doves, blues, lilacs, etc, are all recessive to blacks.


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## Jack Garcia

Actually, that's not right.

a/a B/* C/* D/* P/* does equal black, but it's not because black is dominant to chocolate or blue (for example). Black, on the A-locus, cannot be dominant to anything except what is already possible on the A-locus. In other words, black can't displace chocolate or blue because it is not on the same locus (or even chromosome, necessarily). The same is true for all loci. Black is dominant only to extreme non-agouti and is recessive to everything else on its locus. Chocolate (b) is recessive to full-color (B). Pink-eyes (p) is recessive to dark eyes (P), etc.


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## jujubee18

I feel completely stupid...I'm already a little lost XD Sorry guys...I'v seriously been trying to understand the basics for days....thanks for telling me about how it goes alphabetically...thats easy to understand. when you have caps with stars behind the letters.. this seems like a stupid question...i know it is self, but what does everything stand for? like B* C* D* P*


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## Jack Garcia

I'll use the A-locus as an example.

A/A means the mouse has two copies of agouti (one from each parent). A/a means one copy of agouti and one of non-agouti (aka "black").

A/* means the mouse has one copy of agouti, and the other allele is unknown. It could be anything equal to or below agouti on the hierarchy of the A-locus.

By convention, the more dominant allele (in this case, agouti) is always listed first, so you'd see A/a and never a/A (for example).

That's the simple version, at least. There are a couple of exceptions that popped into my mind immediately, but for most of the time, the above is true.


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## jujubee18

Oh Ok i understand now thanks.


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## Jack Garcia

You're very welcome. 

You'll also find different ways of writing the two alleles, for example:

A/a or Aa

Both are correct. I like to put a slash between the two (A/a) to show that they're separate because with some mutations that have multiple letters, like American brindle (Avy/*) you may end up having a long string of letters if there's no slash (as with a brindle who is also tan, Avy/at, or something) which can sometimes get confusing.


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## jujubee18

Yeah i can understand that I always remember using the slashes in my bio tech course. :]
ok so im kind of understanding this... If i were to try to find the code for Mojo her code would be....um
a/a B/B C/c D/D E/e P/p B/B and D/D[since i didn't get any chocolates or blues?] ok wow i hope i got a morsel of that right...sorry if i got it wrong...


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## jujubee18

Also i know the code for broken is s/s so do i add that in by adding it to the end like in the alphabet?

a/a B/B C/c D/D E/e P/p s/s

Also if i want to add in something like the head spot or belted gene...How do i do that? I looked at the codes page, and there is only what id call "half a set" so it confuses me. Sorry for being such a noob, and thank you for all the help :]


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## Jack Garcia

Head spots are currently a bit of an unknown. Some people represent them as hs/hs but others use simply s/s, believing headspots are a form of regular recessive white spotting that takes the form of head spots (and belly spots. They always or nearly always also have belly spots as well as head spots).

Recessive white spotting is s/s, yes. Belted, if I remember right, is bt/bt.

Generally unless otherwise specified, if something is not listed, it is assumed to be wild type. For example:

A/at sa/sa

The above is assumed to be A/at on the A-locus, sa/sa on the satin-locus, and B/B C/C D/D, etc.


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## moustress

OMG! The egg carton with the babies in it is hilarious and beyond cute! What a wonderful idea!


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## jujubee18

The head spots and white belly make since...i usually almost always have them together. I'm still a little confused as to what a wild type is.

I forgot to add thank you for the compliments :]


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## Jack Garcia

You're very welcome! 

Wild type is basically an agouti mouse who carries and shows nothing in terms of coat or color mutations, so A/A B/B C/C D/D E/E P/P S/S w/w and so forth.


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## jujubee18

I'm going over it again and noticed i messed up on her already....atleast im noticing my own mistakes. can you tell me what C/C is again? and so if her genetics a/a B/B C/c D/D E/e P/P s/s I don't need to include the wild types it would look like this:

a/a C/c E/e s/s ?


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## Jack Garcia

Yeah, that's right I think. The mouse you describe (a/a C/c E/e s/s) is a black spotted mouse who carries PEW and recessive yellow.

"C" is "full color." This means not-albino ("c"), not-himalayan/siamese ("ch"), not beige/stone ("ce"), and not chinchilla/sepia/burmese ("cch").


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## jujubee18

I don't think she carries PEW because none of her babies have been PEW. however some of her siblings were PEW...


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## Jack Garcia

She could still carry PEW. If her partner doesn't also carry it, you'd never know (you have to have one copy of "c" from each parent to be a PEW).


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## jujubee18

Ok i understand, thank you :]


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## jujubee18

lol... another thing..[sorry i have so many questions] since Secretes has three colors... he is black but has a white and yellow patch on his head that i would consider a head spot. Would i just make the yellow recessive or make it e/e?

a/a C/c e/e hs/hs S/s [is this possible? I know he isn't what people generally consider a tri but he does have three colors]

or a/a C/c E/e hs/hs S/s

since most of the babies are spotted, but some aren't he has to be S/s right? I herd it is possible for spots to just take up a whole body and hide the spotting gene...so can he be s/s like the mother? I also don't think he had any siblings that are PEW so he may not have the Pew recessive? which would explain why mojo and him didn't have any Pew babies. In the case of a mouse not having a PEW recessive gene what would i write?


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## Jack Garcia

You're very welcome. 

When a mouse has littermates with a recessive color such as PEW, there's around a 66% chance that they carry it as well.


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## Jack Garcia

jujubee18 said:


> lol... another thing..[sorry i have so many questions] since Secretes has three colors... he is black but has a white and yellow patch on his head that i would consider a head spot. Would i just make the yellow recessive or make it e/e?


Don't apologize! I am here to teach (and learn)! 

I think Secretes is an anomaly, honestly. Having a yellow patch in the middle of black and white is not common, but it does happen with mosaic chimerism. I have a friend in NY who had a mouse like this. It's generally not reproduceable (as you've seen) unless the chimerism occurs on his reproductive organs.



> a/a C/c e/e hs/hs S/s [is this possible? I know he isn't what people generally consider a tri but he does have three colors]


This is possible, but he'd be a recessive yellow mouse with white headspots. He'd carry PEW and white spots.



> or a/a C/c E/e hs/hs S/s


This would be a black mouse with headspots who carries spots, recessive yellow, and PEW.



> since most of the babies are spotted, but some aren't he has to be S/s right?


Right. 



> I herd it is possible for spots to just take up a whole body and hide the spotting gene...so can he be s/s like the mother?


The spots are the white parts, not the black parts (a common mistake). If a mouse is all spots, it is solid white.



> In the case of a mouse not having a PEW recessive gene what would i write?


C/*, generally.


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## jujubee18

XD wow I suddenly want to break out and sing I can see clearly now by Johnny Nash XD

Secretes is a/a C/* E/e hs/hs S/s
Mojo is a/a C/c E/e s/s

so the yellow spotted babies are: a/a C/* e/e Hs/hs s/s [a/a even if they aren't black? or A/a]
black spotted: a/a C/* E/e Hs/hs s/s
black head spot: a/a C/* E/e hs/hs S/s

Did i get it right?


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## Jack Garcia

That seems right to me, assuming that the genes for headspot and white spotting are different.

a/a e/e is technically both recessive yellow and black, but for all intents and purposes, the recessive yellow "covers up" the black. Recessive yellow mice can actually be anything on the A-locus and still appear yellow. The only thing recessive yellow does not "mask" is C-dilutes like himalayan, albino, and beige. It turns them to a white or off-white.


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## jujubee18

AWESOME  I'm so happy i figured it out! thank you so much :] I'm sure ill run into more questions eventually but this is a great start for me :]


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