Thanks Blueapplepaste, for taking the time to explain that so fully. i completely followed what you said. And that part I understood. I even had it right in my original post. I get screwed up when I go beyond Normals and Amels. for instance, what if you are adding in the carmel gene?
As Talinea said, any single morph/mutation in corns (so far) works just as I described. What I described is known as a simple recessive (meaning two copies are needed) genes. Caramel, lavender, stripe, hypo, anery, etc work in the exact same way as described.
Now, if you add two genes in the mix, it gets more complicated, but still works in more or less the same way.
Lets try an example and throw caramel in the mix. So lets say you have amel x caramel. The wild type caramel gene we'll call C and the mutant we'll call c. So the amel corn is aaCC and the caramel corn is AAcc. The amel has two copies of the wild type caramel and two copies of the mutant amel gene. The caramel is just the opposite. Each parent will donate one copy of each gene. So the amel gives a and C and the caramel gives A and c. So we get: amel x caramel = normal 100% het caramel and amel.
Also aaCC x AAcc = AaCc
All are appear normal, but carry mutant copies of each gene. Now, lets say you breed two of those together, what will we get. Well there's a very simple way to look at it, but it lacks other genetic possibilities, and there's the more complex.
The easiest way is that for each gene there is a 1/4 chance of getting an animal homozygous for the mutated copy for either gene. Refer back to my earlier post. So there's a 1/4 chance that the offspring will be amel and there's a 1/4 chance that they'll be caramel. Now the chance of them being amel
and caramel, we simply multiply the odds for each gene on its own. So 1/4 x 1/4 = 1/16 chance of producing an amel caramel or a butter.
So there's a 1/16 chance of producing a double homozygous mutant. But what about odds for the rest? Back to the Punnett square, except now it gets bigger. Same as before. Each parent donates one copy of the gene. So each will donate either A or a and either C or c. So for each parent the possibilities of combinations donated are AC, Ac, aC, and ac. These are the 4 possible genetic donations a single parent can have with regard to the caramel and amel genes. So these 4 will make up our punnett square.
. AC Ac aC ac
AC AACC AACc AaCC AaCc
Ac AACc AAcc AaCc Aacc
aC AaCC AaCc aaCC aaCc
ac AaCc Aacc aaCc aacc
So we see that there are 16 different genetic possibilities with this pairing. You can see that 1/16 will be homozygous amel and caramel (butter), 1/4 will be homozygous amel, 1/4 will be homozygous caramel, and so on. You can also see any amels (aa) have a 2/3 chance of being het caramel (just like my earlier example) and any caramels (cc) have a 2/3 chance of being het amel. You can also notice that 15/16 will be het or homozygous for at least one gene. Only 1/16 will be completely homozygous wild type.
You can do this for any combination of genes, and for any number of genes, you just keep expanding the square.
One thing to keep in mind also, is that all of this genetics is just probability. When I say 1/4, it means that the probability is 1/4. But nothing is guaranteed when it comes to the odds. So if and when you start breeding, if you have a double het animal pairing and they lay 16 eggs, it doesn't mean that 1 of them will definitely be double homozygous. It means that each egg has a 1/16 chance of being double homozygous, but its not guaranteed.
