Calling all mouse genetics experts!

[sdmessmer]

I only have one colony of mice. I got a couple of litters by my new brindle stud mouse out of a silver agouti banded and a red eyed fawn. Brindle seems to be a dominate gene and my stud must be hetero for the trait since about half the babies are brindle and half not. I would like to hold back some for new colonies but would like to avoid brindle males since they tend to get so fat (I only kept their dad because he is such a sweet father to all the babies, never killed a baby even when put with an old colony of females that were pregnant by another male). My question is whether brindle is masked by black as there are several nice black male hoppers, but I can't tell if they carry brindle. I also got a very light cream banded male that is so light I can't tell if he carries brindle or not. :shrugs:

Silvia

 

[Gintha]

Are the black male hoppers from the brindle father? I have found the brindle gene to be very very dominant, usually all of the babies from a brindle parent either are brindle, or produce brindle pups. I ask about the black ones, as they could also be brindle, and just be hard to tell. If you have access to a microscope you can look closely at the hairs under medium power and check for the brindle patterning =) Brindle hairs tend to look blotchy compaired to "normal" hairs, not always, but generally. Not a mouse genetics expert by any means hehe, but this is what I know from experience, brindle is hard to breed out of a population ~,~

 

[sdmessmer]

Black bindles?

Are the black male hoppers from the brindle father? I have found the brindle gene to be very very dominant, usually all of the babies from a brindle parent either are brindle, or produce brindle pups. I ask about the black ones, as they could also be brindle, and just be hard to tell. If you have access to a microscope you can look closely at the hairs under medium power and check for the brindle patterning =) Brindle hairs tend to look blotchy compaired to "normal" hairs, not always, but generally. Not a mouse genetics expert by any means hehe, but this is what I know from experience, brindle is hard to breed out of a population ~,~

Yes they are from the brindle father, he is my only adult male right now. About half his babies are non-brindles so he is het for brindle which is dominate (think brown eyed humans that carry blue eyed gene, half the kids would be brown eyed if "bred" to a non brown eyed human). If he was homozygous for brindle then ALL his offspring would be brindle. My problem is telling which offspring *might* be non-brindles. I'll try your suggestion with the blacks and use a magnifying glass to look closely at their hairs. Don't have a microscope! I'll look at a couple of obvious brindle babies and see if I can tell a difference in their hairs too. I hope I can get them to hold still long enough to see!

I can see where brindle can take over a colony pretty quick, but I'm going to be careful not to breed to brindles together to make homozygous for brindle mice. That way I can be sure to always have non-brindles to set up new colonies. I'm not sure if brindle males usually are such good fathers, but if so maybe it is worth having some obese mice. I had to feed off my other colonies because of cannibalism so I really appreciate this little roly poly boy I have now!

Thanks for your suggestion Gintha!

:wavey:

Silvia

 

[sbourget]

One of my females is a fawn/black brindle. But I have not seen any with the Brindle gene in her babies yet. I guess I'll have to wait because I saved one of her daughters to see if she carries it. I'll have to wait another 2 weeks till she produces.

 

[Gintha]

Trying to think of the name of the guy that did the mouse colony genetics experiments, but so far its eluding me ~,~. If the mice are het for brindle, it can skip a generation, would depend one what you were breeding the brindle to.

His example works like this: take 3 white mice and a savanah brindle, white mouse pair and the white with brindle; breed them. Take white mouse daughter and son from those two pairings; breed them. Some of the babies will be savanah brindle.

In the experiment, the dominant genes are for albinism. Check out this link to Mendel's work. The mouse experiment proved true for the same results. Mendle's experiment is what I'm re-creating, using my snakes hehe =)