Originally posted by Mercurial
I dont understand the working out of dihybrid crossing linked genes though. Like doin the punet squares with them and setting out. If any1 can help pleez. [/B]
Hey! hopefully this will help.. it is my understanding of dihybrid crosses..
Dihyrbid crosses involve 2 characteristics, eg, height and leaf colour.
Say that 'H' was the dominant allele for 'tall' and 'h' was the recessive allele for 'short', and that 'W' was the dominant allele for 'white leaves' and 'w' was the recessive allele for 'black leaves...'
If we had to perform a parental cross of Tall and White (lets say TTWW) and short and black (ttww), the possible genotypes would be: TW only from one parents and tw from the other parents.
Therefore, if we had to do a punnet square cross, we would cross the alleles for 'TW' and 'tw'. The resulting F1 generation would be all be TtWw, ie tall and white (from the punnet square).
Say, for example, we wanted to cross this generation of TtWw with another TtWw.
The possible alleles are now TW, Tw, tW, tw for both... so we cross TW, Tw, tW, tw against a TW, Tw, tW, tw in a punnet square.... and combine the alleles to form lots of offspring with varying genotypes eg TW x TW from one of the crosses will give TTWW... etc. The ratio of the phenotype (what they look like) is usually 9:3:3:1...
Anyway.. try drawing up a punnet square again - it becomes easier after a while..