#multiple alleles

[er-cryptid]

#studyblr #notes #medblr #medical notes #med notes #phenotypic ratio #finding phenotypic ratio #phenotypes #genotypes #phenotype #genotype #genetics #genetics notes #biology #biology notes #bio #bio notes #alleles #multiple alleles #allele ratios

[hellsitegenetics]

this might be a stupid question, but if theres a protein that multiple organisms need, wouldn't the a t g c genetic code for it be the same for different species? or at least closely related species? so theoretically some prompts/sequences should have multiple fitting organisms or closest fitting organisms

(i know it isn't this simple, but im wondering what the exact reason it doesn't work like that is, or what im missing)

not a stupid question, i'll try to answer it to the best of my understanding, but if anyone has anything to add, please do.

put shortly: you're right! if multiple organisms need a certain protein, the code in their DNA is generally the same in that region.

from a genetics perspective, all organisms are actually extremely similar. i'm sure you've heard that we humans share more than half our genetic information with bananas and such.

this is just a factor of how evolution works. every so often, a mutation occurs in an organism's genome, which has a chance to increase the fitness of that organism, which allows it to have more offspring, which changes the mix of alleles in the population. and this is how we get different species of things.

but, because we all share a common ancestor from a long, long, long, long time ago, we do maintain some similarities, especially in regions that code for things essential to life.

those regions where things are *different* is where we're able to tell one species from another, differentiating moths from trees and such. but, overall, all living organisms have a whole lot in common.

#asks #genetics #biology #ymawgat #thank you for the question :)

[crevicedwelling]

You mentioned finding the "first" pink mutant outside your house, right? I'm very curious, how did you go about breeding more if you only started with one? Did you just plonk it in with some natural morphs and hoped the mutation remained strong enough to breed more pinks? I would love to breed morphs but if I found a single mutant im not sure what i should do with it to avoid losing the mutation to more natural colors

Mendelian inheritance operates on the fact that these organisms are diploid and get one set of genes from each parent, assorted randomly during development. you can use a Punnett square to diagram this:

every isopod has two copies of the gene “P”; the mutant allele (form of the gene) I will call “p.” you only get the pink color when the genotype is pp; all other combinations Pp and PP result in the typical gray color. this pattern is thus called recessive inheritance, since the mutant is “covered up” by the dominant trait. because of this you won’t know there are mutant alleles until you see a pp mutant pink phenotype.

first we cross pink (pp) x wildtype (PP): the only combinations possible when you take one from each parent is Pp; all phenotypes gray. the ratio is 100% of the offspring are gray but carry the pink gene (heterozygous).

pp x PP = Pp Pp Pp Pp

next we cross heterozygote (Pp) x heterozygote (Pp); there are four possible outcomes. 25% will be PP with gray phenotype, 50% will be Pp with gray phenotype, and 25% will be pp with pink phenotype.

Pp x Pp = PP Pp Pp pp

so, 1 mutant isopod crossed to 1 wildtype isopod might make 15-30 F1 cross babies, which might produce some 100 or so F2, and 1/4 of that will be mutants, so now there’s 25 new mutants to breed from. since female isopods can produce a clutch every couple months, and live for ~1y, it’s possible with careful feeding to produce a fully recessive mutant strain very quickly, and I have done so many times in the last few years.

of course, it’s not so clean as that, since not all mutations are simple recessive and female isopods can store sperm from multiple males for months and also isopods cannibalize one another, so results can vary a lot.

#genetics

[amber-tortoiseshell]

Male tortoiseshells

Tumblr loves male tortoiseshells, right?

It's common knowledge (...i think?) that's tortoiseshell cats are almost always females. (Here and everywhere else i use the word "tortoiseshell" in its broadest meaning: it includes all kind of calicos and torbies.) The reason of this is that the red color's gene is located on the X chromosome, so if a cat is both red and not red (in other words it's a tortie), it needs two different X chromosomes: one with the red (O), one with the black (o) allele.

Generally there are two ways to get a male tortoiseshell: he can be a chimera, or or he can have atypical number of sex chromosomes.

Chimeras are the fusion of two or more embryos thus they can have cells with different genotypes: they can be longhaired and shorthaired at the same time, have both diluted and undiluted area in their furs, or... be black and red in patches. They are generally fertile and pass the colors that their gonads (testicles or ovaries) carry, which is not necessirely the same as they show.

The normal number of sex chromosomes are two; for males an X and an Y. If a cat has two Xs and an Y, it'll be male, but it can carry both the O and the o alleles. Of course, an XXY male can easily have two red or two black alleles, and be a seemingly normal red or black cat. But they are typically infertile regardless of their color.

Let's see some male tortoiseshells!

Dawntreader Texas Calboy

Yeah, he's quite tumblr-famous, maybe you've seen that one post about him. He's a black tortoiseshell blotched tabby with white, a chimera and fertile; on his facebook page you can see several of his children. He has both black and red daughters, which means he can produces gametes from both of his cell lines.

Unfortunately I coudn't find his name, but in this picture the back right kitten is also a male tortoiseshell. Specifically, he's a black smoke karpati tortoiseshell with white and dominant blue eyes. (His breeder seems to like experimenting with new things.) More pictures and videos in his owner's facebook posts (it's possible that you have to join the group to see it): newborn kitten kitten young adult

Sherpa Cats Beyond Heaven

Beside red and black he also seems to mix pointed and not pointed. (Note the dark red cheeks and the light brown legs of a black colorpoint.) When tested, he consistently showed the results of multiple cats.

Ezra

He is red with a few black patches, and tufts of long hair. His owner tested him and the lab found both XX (female) and XY (male) cells, so he definitely is a chimera. I find his differently colored eyes especially cool!

Brady

Black tortoiseshell tabby with white, and for once not a chimera: according to the tests he has three sex chromosomes, XXY.

#cats #genetics #intersex animals #chimerism #cat genetics #chimera #orange #this is from the cat color gene tournament #it was in the bonus section #i decided to make individual posts so it's easier to access them

[tanadrin]

Do you think it's possible there's a planet with multiple stable sentient species who interact? Or would such a situation inevitably end up with one getting wiped out or the two hybridizing

Well, they could only hybridize if they were closely related, like humans and Neanderthals. And IIRC there's some evidence that humans and Neanderthals/Denisovans probably weren't all that interfertile to begin with, with most coding Neanderthal alleles getting weeded out of our genome.

I think it would be very difficult for two sentient species that shared overlapping niches to survive. H. sapiens and Neanderthals were both smart, seem to have both had language and culture, and had similar levels of technological sophistication, but the latter had a much lower population and so couldn't really compete when their cousins invaded their territory. And maybe some of this is a function of the wider human clade's tendency to engage in warfare and ecologically disruptive hunting--there's a big wave of megafauna extinction that seems to have followed the expansion of human populations all over the globe--but I'm not sure how many species of big-brained tool-users any niche could support.

But I do think that species with very different niches could coexist peacefully, at least long enough to work out that species in other niches were sentient, and to develop the ethical frameworks necessary for coexistence. If there were superintelligent squid, they wouldn't ever compete directly with humans for habitat (though we might have eaten a fair few by accident). We have also managed (just!) not to render extinct cetaceans, which are fairly intelligent, or our close cousins the chimpanzee. I could also imagine a science fictional scenario where two intelligent species were in some kind of important symbiotic or commensalist relationship that would stabilize their coexistence.

I think the other tricky thing though would be timing. It took a long time for the genus Homo to develop intelligence. AFAICT the australopithecines were closer to chimpanzees in terms of intelligence than they were to us; H. erectus was a lot smarter, but probably didn't have language; it's not until 700,000 to 200,000 years ago you get human species that are more fully developed in terms of their intelligence, and that feels like a super narrow window in terms of evolution for another intelligence species to also emerge. Because once you do get intelligent tool-users who spread over most of the globe, they seem likely to me to start to modify their environment in profound ways, like we have. So if another intelligent species doesn't already exist, the circumstances in which it is likely to arise after one species comes to prominence are going to be very different--more of an uplift scenario, maybe. Like I think if we discovered a group of chimpanzees with rudimentary language tomorrow, we would do our best not to fuck with them, but we would inevitably have some kind of impact on their existence for better or worse, right?

Maybe your best bet for multiple sentient species would be to have a reason that the first species (singular or plural) that arose didn't come to dominate the entire planet--they were aquatic, and so never mastered fire; or they were otherwise highly restricted in the biomes they could inhabit; or they were small in number like the Neanderthals, but could retreat to refugia in mountains and forests rather than be wiped out; or they were a diverse clade like early humans, but they also spread out very rapidly, and were subsequently isolated by climate conditions. Like, imagine Denisovans (who were already in Asia) had crossed the Bering Strait land bridge to the Americas, and then sea levels rose cutting them off until the Age of Discovery. If you had a planet that didn't effectively have a two supercontinents like Earth, you might have many more opportunities for related-but-geographically-divided species to develop (though that doesn't avoid the problem of what happens when they meet each other and start competing then).

[mixelation]

Does Itachi still have his lung disease in the Reborn AU? Does Tori fix that since shes technically a medic? Or would Tsunade/Sakura be better for that?? (Does Tsunade even come back????)

i haven't thought about this a lot for reborn au, but usually for AUs where itachi stays in konoha, i go with "it's chronic but he has access to ongoing expert treatments/management so it's not going to kill him any time soon." as a person with multiple chronic illnesses, i don't like the idea that "taking a bunch of drugs just to stay alive" (or whatever obito called it) is like... bad or a last resort action. some people are just on medications for their entire lives, or they have to make specific life-style changes. it's not a big deal. i think adding this to a ninja setting makes the worldbuilding more realistic/interesting

anyway, i actually don't think i'll send tsunade back to konoha in this au, so it's probably like the difference between "sees a random doctor willing to talk to missing-nin/under genjutsu every once in a while" (what i imagine he was doing in canon) and "has a care team he can see regularly, and also konoha just has the best medics available, so they're able to diagnosis him and do wild chakra-based interventions."

i think tori's medical training is like... she already had some skills for her research, and so konoha was like "here, enroll in three years of training, we always need more medic-nin" and then she's in a constant battle with the hospital where she's trying to dodge shifts and occasionally gets put on completely rando missions just because she's technically a medic and they need one. (sometimes they call her in for weird chakra anomalies, which is actually relevant to her research, so she's like "oh neat!" and the hospital is like "FIX IT NOW" and she's like "...do i have to?") so she's probably gotten some itachi's-lung-specific training because she works with him frequently, so she could do an emergency intervention if he had a poorly timed flare-up, but most of the basic management is up to him

tori might be interested in doing research on his disease? but i wouldn't write a ".....and then she cured it!" narrative. it would be like "hey itachi i knocked out this allele in some mice and 30% of them developed respiratory problems compared to 0% of the control" and itachi is like ".....okay?"

#reborn au

[elbiotipo]

How should nekomimi be inherited to not look weird?

I think that if they are simply humans with certain animalistic traits then it can be done like irl phenotypes, basically "some mixed kids inherit them, some don't" and leave it here, so there can be a community of mostly cat people with some individuals with fully human features to not make it look weird (and vice-versa, some nekomimi people amongst "normal" humans who don't belong to any of the cultures of cat people).

But what about some more complicated feline features like vision or dietary needs and such?

And even more importantly, is my idea of how to do nekomimi genetics in a fantasy setting not weird in itself?

It's NOT weird. The only thing better than catgirls are catgirls who fit in the worldbuilding.

Now, if you want a technobabble excuse, you could always use homeobox genes that you could say develop different kinds of ears, tails (biologist note: this is NOT exactly how homeobox genes work, but they do kinda work as an technobabble excuse) inside a wider, let's say, "humanoid" species or genus. These could be inherited as diverse alleles of such traits (for example, the 'ears' gene could have cat-like, dog-like, human-like, etc. alelles) and also have mendelian or non-mendelian distributions. Suppose you want to make a fantasy mendelian system, you could say "cat ears are recessive, human ears are dominant" (note: "recessive" and "dominant" don't mean "worse" and "better" it just means than an allele is "hidden" or deactivated by the dominant one. Sorry if I make a mistake, I learned all this in Spanish) and figure out inheritance from there, just traits that are cleanly inherited in regular proportions. This is not how most genetics work, however. There's multiple kinds of non-mendelian inheritance... multiple alleles, codominance, sex-linked inheritance, and of course quantitative genetics which is when alleles don't manifest in a single discrete trait but rather a continous measurable one (such as height)... now I feel I'm doing my genetics course again, but I'm sure you can tell how such things can work if you read an intro text about it.

There's a bunch of caveats here, and I'm gonna speak very broadly here. In humans, there aren't single, well defined genes that codify appearance for, for example, hair texture and color, skin/eye color, etc. in the sense that there's a "blue eye gene" or "curly hair gene". In fact this is the case for most genes, most are multi-allelic or quantitative with different 'weights' for a continous trait. Or BOTH. People tend to inherit different genetic 'weights' (very unscientific term here, sorry) from one parent or another and this can be very random, with some expressing different traits even if having the same family (this is why you see people who resemble almost perfectly to one parent instead of a "mix" of both, and of course those who indeed look like a mix of both. And these in turn have nothing to do with genetic diseases, blood types, or other inheritable things) There are hundreds of genes involved in each trait of human appearance and they all interact with each other, and most aren't even known, we don't fully know the genes that regulate skin, hair or eye color, just to give a few examples. So it's almost never stuff like "dominant purple flower, recessive white flower", Mendel was VERY lucky and smart to pick out discrete alleles to find out his laws. Most traits aren't like that at all, especially in animals.

Which brings me to my next point. It's very unlikely mendelian inheritance of traits such as ears or tails would have evolved naturally in animals. The development of characteristics such as ears or tails is deep, deep in the early embryo development, a very fragile period for animals. A species that has such huge genetic variations in such key periods of development faces severe selective pressure and it's unlikely these extreme "alleles" would remain, errors on them would cause extreme malformations or just embryos not developing at all. Even humans have this trouble, the loss of tails in apes, for example, has let us to suffer from spina bifida, every body plan change has a huge cost and this is why animals are sometimes very conservative with it, most body plans are the modification of existing features rather than the apperance or removal of different ones, and this is at evolutionary scales, not even living populations. Of course, some animals are more, let's say, plastic, like dogs, but even they have a general body plan, there aren't dogs without ears or tails, for instance. Even dogs are the consequence of tens of thousands of very intensive artificial selection which did not happen naturally at all, I mean, it's not like poodles or daschunds have any sexual or natural selection advantage for themselves, they are adventageous for us. You can see that wild and feral dogs, without the pressure of human artificial selection tend to converge into a more general dog plan (the so called "pariah dog", but also see dingos, and of course wolves, I'm skipping a lot of stuff here), adapted to local climates.

Surprisingly, I can see diet being less problematic in this sense. After all, we know there are for example human populations adapted to lactose. Dogs have also evolved enzymes to digest carbohydrates which wolves don't have, while not as nutritious as their carnivorous diet it works better with our human diet. Different bacterial flora can also help digest things that are surprising though, such as cellulose (though bacterial flora is still an underrated and ongoing field of study) It's also much easier to imagine changes in dentition than the whole head plan. So I can easily imagine different populations adapting to different diets. Same with eyes, I mean, daltonic and colorblind human population exists, the EYE is mostly the same, but it works differently. But again, the body plan remains the same. Humans or dogs might have different aptitudes for diets, but they don't stop being omnivores or carnivores.

Of course, tis' fantasy. So why expect things to follow natural evolution? Hell, why even expect fantasy people in a pre-industrial setting to know about homeobox genes? Depending on your setting, it might be that these traits are stable and inheritable because of a magical curse/blessing, or that the gods or the inherent magic of the world said so. However, if you have a species that has multiple, very different appearances and those are inheritable, you're dealing with some rather heavy stuff here that redefines your concept of humanity. In Dungeon Meshi, for instance, they talk about this, as the typical "elf, dwarf, halfling, human" fantasy races all can and do have children with each other, and (spoilers!) they seem to have a common origin, and thus all are actually called "humanity" which is a very interesting concept, because, indeed, what else are they if they don't actually have any real biological barriers. Meanwhile, the differences with other more "distant" species? races? such as orcs and kobolds (canine-like) are shown as rather arbitrary and depending on the culture, in fact, even humans (or rather "tallmen") get excluded from "humanity" in some cases. (not even tackling the whole long-short lived races thing). Similarily, you could say these "nekomimi" are just humans with a particular blessing or curse (again, in Dungeon Meshi, there is Izutsumi), but that works on the particular designs of your fantasy world and magic system... and let's say that when such concepts have appeared in real life, well... I don't need to tell you these are rather heavy and controversial topics to tackle. I don't think you should shy away from portraying them, but again, it's something to think about very carefully.

Since this is a heavy topic, I'm gonna take you out of fantasy for a sci-fi perspective. In my biopunk setting (it's on the tag "soft biopunk" on my blog) there are kemonomimi people all around, and in fact, all sort of genetic cosmetics, in fact, one of the main characters is indeed a communist catgirl. Most of it, however, is made in adults, much like getting tattoos or piercings. Tegument (i.e, skin) in humans and most vertebrates is surprisingly plastic, and one can 'grow' ears and implant them, or estimulate the production of feather or scale genes in the skin. Meanwhile, things such as tails have a little more involved surgery, since you also need to take into account nerves, muscles, circulation, etc. Meanwhile stuff such as muzzles and others require very extensive surgery, so it isn't as common. So these are implants (non inheritable) rather than expression from embryos, what geneticists would say germline modification. Such things also occurs but is done way more carefully and is more extensive, and it's nothing you would do just for the sake of cosmetics, when you're doing that, you're basically starting a new branch of humanity with all that implies. On the other hand, sentient "uplift" cats, dogs, and many other animals do exist, but they aren't animals that act like humans, they are sentient animals with a way of thinking and behavior very different to us, you aren't talking to a "cat with human intelligence", you're talking to an intelligent cat (when they want to talk, anyways). So, you can't REALLY turn a Felis catus into a catgirl, but a Homo sapiens can do a rather passable one.

Well, this has been a lot of fun to write and think about, so I hope you enjoyed it, and sorry for the walls of text! I promise to make a better post with some better illustrations of hot catgirls. In any case, if you found this useful, I would be very grateful if you gave me a tip! Given our economic situation here with Milei (the guy who cloned his dog, how appropiate), anything helps!

Feel free to ask anything you'd like!

#worldbuilding #genetics #I'm so sorry I'm sure I made like ten thousand mistakes about genetics here #but I hope it makes sense! #sorry for not answering earlier I was really typing like mad #catgirls #I mean it's true isn't it

[catboybiologist]

can you elaborate on why some animals can self fertilize but it's bad for lots of animals to screw their siblings?

This has been sitting in my ask box forever bc I just keep forgetting to answer it LOL

Imma roll back to some basic genetic principles for this one, many of y'all will probably already know a good chunk of this.

If you remember your Mendelian genetics, you'll know you have two copies of every gene. Those genes come in forms called "alleles". The different alleles in a population are responsible for variation within that population, as each allele causes a different version of that trait. Now practically, a "trait" here is some deeply rooted biochemical concept that is extremely difficult to be visible in the organism overall because its linked to a million different signaling processes that will get obscured by it. The most strictly Mendelian example in humans that everyone knows is probably A/B/O blood type (I'm beating the horny people off with a stick if you read A/B/O differently). This is a great example because it also demonstrates the most common type of way that alleles can be recessive. Put simply, A and B are genes that code for functional proteins. O codes for a nonfunctional protein, and therefore is a lack of a protein. This is why someone that is genotypically AO has an A blood type overall, whereas AB is it's own distinct blood type. The recessive gene codes for nothing, the dominant gene codes for something, and the cell just produces a bit more off of the "functional" version (sometimes. broad generalizations all around. There are dominant loss of function genes but they're rare.). So to actually have an O blood type, both copies of that gene need to be O. Why is this relevant? Well, in blood type, the nonfunctional version of the gene doesn't affect the body really in any way, other than immune system reactions during transfusion. This is also the case with many other recessive genes. But for many, MANY genes, having a nonfunctional version is a genetic disease- something in the cell that needs to happen, or be built, isn't happening. But remember, you need to have both copies of the nonfunctional version of the gene for the gene's function overall to be nonfunctional.

So why are these genes still in the population? Well, their frequency is too low to be a problem most of the time, so there's really no selection pressure for them. Occasionally, you'll get a "disease" allele that happens to be useful in a different situation. The classic example is of course sickle cell anemia, which increases resistance to malaria. But these situations are rare. And of course, evolution happens over changing circumstances, so the selection pressure for a particular gene to be functional might just vanish before the opportunity for it to be bred out of the population arises, and the gene simply disappears from the species overall (looking at you, L-gulono-γ-lactone oxidase).

So those genes are lurking in your genome. You're probably carrying multiple recessive genes that, if you had both copies, would cause debilitating or fatal disease. Its just kind of a fact of the human condition. If you produce offspring with a random person, its highly likely that they won't carry the same nonfunctional genes as you, and your offspring are less likely to get both copies. That random mated partner will give their own set of random nonfunctional genes, but again, its likely they won't be the same as your set. But, if you produce offspring with someone genetically closer to you, the probability of that offspring getting both copies goes up, since that mate is more likely to have the same set of nonfunctional alleles as you.

So that's why inbreeding sucks. But other animals do it all the time- sometimes within family units, sometimes even via self fertilization and/or some other mechanism of parthenogenesis. What gives? There are two reasons why inbreeding could be okay in a given population of organisms, and they're kind of the opposite of each other: 1, the genetic variation in the population is so low, and has been through so many harsh evolutionary bottlenecks that there are very few deleterious mutations left in the genome. Sometimes, these organisms will be homozygous at every locus, meaning that different combinations of two different alleles is impossible. This is the extreme case, but humans have created exactly this organism- the lab N2 strain of C. elegans. This is horrible for a species long term, however, since you're essentially stalling gene flow between populations, meaning that all future natural selection has to happen on literally the same lineage of organisms from a single parent. These species are rare and tend not to be adaptable to long term change- many will have the ability to cross fertilize, and just do so on rarer occasions than most other organisms.

2, the genetic variation of the population is so high that the probability of finding a mate with the exact same deleterious mutation as you is very low, especially for multiple genes at once like humans get. Similar to the other situation, this can't hold up long term, because multiple generations of inbreeding will slowly increase the frequency of certain alleles in the population over time- but with some gene flow and/or careful mate selection, its possible.

Humans are at the messy little sweet spot between these two. Our genetic variation is incredibly low when compared to similar complex chordate species (thanks, pleistiocene population bottleneck), but we still have enough variation kicking around for those pesky mutations to still be here. Additionally, we're a species that cares for each other more intensely than most others, and uses social units to compensate for the entire group. So one or two individuals over the years with a genetic disease will survive, and pass that on. This is a good and incredible thing about the resilience of our species, so if you're gonna be weird about using evolution as morality you can gtfo.

So uh... yeah. Hope that answers your question! Now go play the Coffin of Andy and Leyley to answer any other questions you may have about incest.

#biology #the video game joke was a joke #I hope yall realize #although i am kinda morbidly curious about that game

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

aren't the Russian "domesticated" foxes just... selectively bred fur farm foxes? Iirc didn't the guy who runs it basically just keep inbreeding them with no outside gene pool control group?

Theoretically speaking, to form trait patterns for domestication, wouldn't that involve using a wild population (or at the very least far separated group) to throughly root out which behaviors are already present in a species and which are from genetic radiation via breeding???

Yes, yes, exactly. Farm foxes are already considered “domesticated” by some definitions, using them as a starting point to determine what phenotypes may or may not be linked to tameness is not logical as these farm foxes already have many traits not found in wild foxes. He considered the control group to be the other farm foxes he wasn’t breeding, but fundamentally if you have a small population you’re breeding and one comes out with a mutation for floppy ears, the next generations are liable to have it as well because the genetic diversity is so low that you are inevitably going to cross the floppy eared foxes. Additionally, there was not a way to write out gene sequences at the time as far as I’m aware, which means you cannot isolate when that allele first occurred. If floppy ears were a recessive trait in foxes, the mutation could have occurred much higher up the pedigree than the researchers realized, resulting in apparent genesis of this trait from different vixens at the same time.

I know I’m going in circles and may not even be making myself clear anymore, but yeh biggest problem with the research is that it made too bold a conclusion based on what data they had, they did not acknowledge the limitations, biases, and error margins enough nor did they highlight holes in the data until decades later when others had already started doing so as well. The experiment went a ways in showing the validity of Mendelian genetics to soviet Russia, and that in and of itself had value, but this was also proven well by pea plants and multiple other selective breeding experiments with better documentation and control. It did not however prove “domestication syndrome” to be valid, and that has still yet to be proven by a more effective study.

Another issue with the study is that the way it was presented abroad turned it into a sensationalist “wow look we can have pet foxes now” which may not have been solely on the fault of the researchers, but the study is almost directly the cause of the pet fox craze in the modern day. Some people would have still done it anyway of course, but this is the study fox keepers always fall back to when confronted.

[pkmnprofloblolly]

I know that evolutions are called different things while technically being the same base mon, and i understand it... but do you have any idea WHY we differentiate maushold from tandemous ?? Or tandemous in general, theyre all mous arent they ??? It confuses me so bad

this brings up a very neat distinction ive been meaning to have an excuse to talk about- the difference between pokemon metamorphosis and evolution.

now, for almost all pokemon, metamorphosis and evolution are the exact same thing. metamorphosis is generally just the accepted scientific term, as not to cause confusion between evolution (an individual pokemon irreversibly changing form) and evolution (change in allele frequencies over time). you can imagine how that'd get confusing, especially for the folks that study the evolution of metamorphosis.

the few places where these two terms diverge all have to do with the fact that there are some pokemon in which one "individual" is made up of several disparate organisms working in tandem(aus). for pokemon trainers, it makes the most sense to classify pokemon like magneton or dugtrio as one pokemon instead of three, because those three individuals work together as one (with new stats, movepool, and so on) and after evolution will not accept being separated. these pokemon, where one is made of several individuals, are often called conglomerate pokemon.

(there are also conglomerate pokemon which do not have evolutions like tandemaus and diglett- such as klink. one klink is made of two organisms (the minigears) which live inseparably from one another, and they remain only two organisms as they evolve into klang and klinklang. just an interesting exception.)

so, both evolution and metamorphosis occur when, say, a caterpie becomes a metapod. however, only evolution occurs when a diglett becomes a dugtrio. when diglett evolves, it is not changing form, but is going through a form of asexual reproduction known as fragmentation, where one organism splits into multiple individuals, all genetically identical. these three 'triplets' will stick together for the rest of their life. dugtrio also reproduces by fragmentation, but in that case a split individual will be much smaller and will not be part of the conglomerate dugtrio, instead being a new baby diglett.

likewise, to your original question, tandemaus is a conglomerate pokemon comprised of two individual Mus geminos. when those two M. geminos reproduce, almost always having two offspring, the whole family stays together until the death of the parents. this family is the conglomerate pokemon maushold. tandemaus and maushold are considered different pokemon because of how they are ranked with new stats, potential abilities, and moves. basically, the distinction is made when it's useful to trainers or to the general public, since pokemon are given their accepted common names by the international pokemon league. (when the parent M. geminos perish, almost always at about the same time, the two child individuals part ways to find a mate, and to form a new tandemaus. the individuals here don't have a proper moniker and dex number because they're rarely significant to trainers or other folks who work with pokemon.)

#pkmn #pkmn irl #pkmn rp #tandemaus #maushold

[lilflowerpot]

given that there are deacons who are members of the church but not actually druids, how do you recognize someone is capable of being a druid? do they have some recognizable feature or is it discovered while joining the church? are there galra who have the ability do be druids but aren't bc they don't know/aren't part of the church? is there some druid checklist going around like "hey, if you can do these things, you should totally join the church bc you might be a druid"? /are there galra school fieldtrips to church outposts?/

You're going to hate me for this, but my punnett squares post, while obscenely long, is very much relevant to this question because it explains the nuance of galra genetics and the likelihood of any given individual inheriting a druidic allele,,, likely in greater depth than anyone other than me probably cares for, but still.

First, a quick refresher of the key terminology:

Deacons—vassals of faith without the ability to manipulate quintessence, often but not always born of druidic ancestry. Druids—known as Sa Naacht in the old tongue, druids are galra born with the ability to manipulate raw quintessence, though the degree to which this is true varies depending on the degree of the individual's natural ability / experience. Priest(esse)s—the lower rank bestowed by the Church upon an individual capable of manipulating quintessence when they complete their training, formerly recognising them as fully-fledged druids. High Priest(esse)s—the upper rank bestowed by the Church upon a druid after decaphoebs of faithful service if they demonstrate exceptional power, skill, and experience. The Archivist—the highest position within the Church answering only to the Imperial Monarch themselves, the Archivist is considered the the living conduit of Sa, and so takes charge of the Empire between rulers as well as guiding said rulers through swearing their oaths to serve and protect the Empire.

As I've said time and time again, bloodlines are important the the galra. So much so, that the Empire keeps rather meticulous track of them and has done for generations, especially with regards to the druids due to their quintessence manipulation abilities being so invaluable, what with quintessence being the primary power-source of pretty much all modern Imperial technology. This, naturally, means that those of druidic ancestry are carefully catalogued at birth, and closely monitored throughout their childhoods for any signs of quintessence sensitivity; such signs in a yet-unrealised druid tend to be subtle (perhaps they have a particularly green thumb, owing to their desire to foster a healthy plant channeling a little of their own quintessence into every flower they care for) but the most tried and true method is regular contact with the Church, as fully-fledged druids are trained to notice even the slightest fluctuation in the quintessence around them.

I've spoken in great depth about the Imperial school system previously, and in that post I covered the fact that all imperial citizens are taught religion along with everything else—every branch equally without preference or prejudice—with members of all manner of churches (not just druidic! not even those solely galra in origin!) speaking to the children about their faith/history/practices. Rather than field trips off-planet that might compromise the safety of their charges, nursery colonies by their very design have everything an imperial child could every possibly wish for right on their doorstep—including religious sites!—ensuring that all children in their care will be periodically seen (and therefore assessed) by multiple seasoned druids over a period of decaphoebs. Of course, particular attention will be paid to kits with druidic ancestors in their recent family history because the likelihood of such children displaying druidic ability is significantly higher than those who do not, but occasionally there are bloodlines that haven't produced a druid in several centuries only to turn out a little bundle of quintessence-sensitive surprises.

This doesn't mean that no unrealised druids of unlikely ancestry slip through the cracks, but it is a rare occurrence.

Truthfully, there's no fool-proof physical indicator of druidic ability, but so far as "recognisable features" are concerned, there's a common galra myth that tsai agmt—natural patterns of skin and/or fur pigmentation, passed from parent to child, as a brand unique to an individual’s lineage—are an indicator of spiritual power, and therefore an obvious sign of druidic blood. While this has been proven categorically false (as many druids do not bear tsai agmt, while many bearers of tsai agmt haven't one drop of druidic blood to their name) there does seem to be an unusually high concentration of druidic bloodlines who have been so marked by Sa... though this may in fact be a result of the Church's inclination to encourage their druids to couple with partners bearing tsai agmt, under the belief that they will produce stronger offspring.

#ao3 little blade #sa screams back #galra history & culture

[catierambles]

Feral Instincts lore dump (strap in)

I kinda heavily implied it, but Imma just come out and say it

In Feral Instincts, if there is a Female Alpha, the packs are matriarchal. If there is one, she runs the show. If there isn't, it's just whoever is Alpha leads the pack. Sy's is special because, before Stephanie comes along, there's four Alphas who all, basically, shared responsibilities and one Beta, who just kinda hangs out.

To break down pack hierarchy

Female Alpha: Leads whatever pack she's a part of, uniting multiple packs into one large pack if the opportunity presents itself and everyone is in agreement.

Male Alpha: Will lead a single pack.

Beta: the second-in-command. the second fiddle, basically. If the Alpha isn't around and shit needs to get done, they'll step up and handle it. Mike never had to do this with Sy and the others because there were four of them, if one wasn't available, one of the others were. Now that he's with Stephanie in the pack she made with the others in the apartment building, he has to step up and start taking on responsibilities.

Omega: pack moms, basically, but can be male or female. Females are more common, but male Omegas do exist. Male Omegas deal with some shit just because 9 times out of 10, Omegas are female so being an Omega is seen as feminine. Toxic masculinity exists everywhere, kiddos. They're nurturers, caregivers, healers. Alphas, male or female, are driven to protect and care for them. Hence why they thought Steph was going to be an Omega before her first shift. They had this overwhelming urge to protect her, so they figured she was going to be an Omega.

Null: Not an Alpha, Omega, or Beta, just kinda there. They're not ferals because their minds didn't break from their first shift, they're still in control of their actions and aren't abnormally violent.

Ferals: They exist completely outside packs and pack hierarchies. Ferals are insane, clinically insane, cannot separate right from wrong, fantasy from reality. They're violent and unpredictable. Jordan Lewis, the feral that kicked this all off, is abnormal even among ferals because he can hide it. "One hell of a Bundy mask" as Sy put it, referring to Ted Bundy, who came across as this charming, attractive, kind, would never hurt a fly, person, when in actuality, he raped and murdered an unknown number of women. He confessed to around 30 and was convicted and sentenced to death for 3 of them, including one 12-year-old girl. Ferals are dangerous, but since Lewis can hide it as well as he can to have relationships and convince people to trust him, that makes him extra dangerous.

Then there's something I might introduce called "Blue wolves". Before the Alpha/Omega/Beta/Null terms were adopted as the norm, they were referred to as the phases of the moon. Alphas were Full (full moon) wolves, Betas were Half (half moon) wolves, Omegas were Crescent (crescent moon) wolves, and Nulls were New (new moon) wolves. Then there's Blue wolves, referring to the Blue moon. Female Alphas aren't common, but Blue wolves are rare. Only occurring once or twice out of every ten thousand wolves. So rare that most don't even believe they actually exist, or don't exist anymore. These wolves manifest as more than one nature. Alpha and Omega, Alpha and Beta, Beta and Omega, not just one or the other, in any possible combination. They're also called Hypostatic wolves, where, in biology terms, Hypostasis is when two genes which are not alleles of each other exist in the same organism, with one sometimes overriding the other. Happens a lot in regards to pigmentation in plants, apparently. The plant may have the genes for two pigments, but one will override the other and the plant will be the winning pigment.

...that got a lot more involved than I originally planned. If you made it this far, mazeltov have a cookie.

#henry cavill #captain syverson #august walker #walter marshall #geralt of rivia #hellraiser mike #feral instincts

[lunanammmi]

Brindleton Bay

Alice and Paolo Rocca have two sons, their only biological children, Noel (a child) and Trace, who works as a marketing assistant, while Hunter and Nylah were adopted. Oh, you might wonder why Trace has blue eyes while both his parents have black/brown eyes. The blue eyes come from Paolo's family. Yk.. when you dive into genetics, there are dominant and recessive alleles. Yeah.. Trace ended up with the recessive one.

Alice works as a home decorator and has a preference for colors like purple, gold, brown, and black. Despite her age, she embraces extra styles, leaning towards Gen Z and a somewhat grunge look. She always adds an extra touch to everything, including decorating their home, which is filled with art and matching colors.

Paolo, originally from Sulani, tied the knot with Alice after falling in love while she was working. They met at a place, and since then, Paolo couldn't take his eyes off her. Paolo is now a pensioner and he has a tattoo on his left arm indicating his connection to Sulani. Although they currently live in Brindleton Bay, Sulani holds a special place in Paolo's heart, just like his family.

Nylah and Hunter, being adopted, showcase facial features that are noticeably different from their "parents". Nylah, who loves beauty, became a freelance makeup artist, exploring her interest in makeup that began when she was little. Hunter works as a graphic designer.

If you're curious about why Hunter and Nylah are adopted, their backstory is under the cut.

Many years ago, before the well-off parents had their own children, they had a very close friend named Sarah, who was going through a tough time. Sarah, a single parent struggling to make ends meet, raised her two children, Hunter and Nylah. During this challenging period, Alice and Paolo became like family to Sarah and her kids. They provided emotional support, helped with food and essentials, and looked after Hunter and Nylah when Sarah had to work multiple jobs.

In a heart-to-heart conversation, Alice made a promise to Sarah. If anything ever happened to her, they would step in as legal guardians for Hunter and Nylah, ensuring the children had a stable and loving home. Tragically years after, Sarah fell seriously ill and passed away, leaving Hunter and Nylah orphaned. As named legal guardians in Sarah's will, the well-off parents felt a deep sense of responsibility and an unwavering commitment to fulfill their promise. They welcomed Hunter and Nylah into their home and family, providing them with the love, care, and opportunities they deserve.

townies count: 79 (teen-elder)

#townies #sims4 #thesims4 #ts4 #simblr #sims4cc #dump #sims4maxismatch #sims4mm

[crevicedwelling]

an unnamed Porcellio scaber morph I’m working on. it seems there’s multiple alleles that add to the light skirt effect and a pale gradient along the back, so breeding them is a little inconsistent. these are some of the nicest looking ones, love their facial markings.

unfortunately this also a line bred from a cross involving “Orange Dalmatian” and I wouldn’t be surprised if both of those genes reappear later.

#porcellio scaber #isopods #bugs #cw bugs #crustaceans

[amber-tortoiseshell]

hi!! i'm trying to figure out widebanding & the multiple CORIN alleles & i am Struggling. do you have any idea what's going on here??? this is what i've got:

- sunshine = wbSIB (recessive), but when a cat has I/- wbSIB/wbSIB, this produces a bimetallic cat instead silver shaded/chinchilla??

- goldenSib = ???? is it just a "basic" wideband that interacts w/ inhibitor gene typically????? or something else entirely???? extreme sunshine maybe??? so confused Dx

- copper = wbBSH, obviously breed specific. gives that white belly look. i assume it also interacts normally w/ pigment inhibitor

- sorrel is in Bengals & it has the white belly look & we don't know much more?

is there an allele for the golden tabby look where it's like black (or whatever color) markings against golden fur? or is it just an aspect of the variable expression in widebanding?

Hello! I'll try to help as much as i can 😊

[I accidentally wrote a very long answer so here's a break for everyone's convience]

So!

Sunshine (wbSIB) és extreme sunshine (wbeSIB) respectively results in the sunshine and extreme sunshine phenotypes. And yes, you're right, sunshine+inhibitor=bimetal, there's no silver shaded from this, you need an other wideband gene for that. (Since CORIN is the only identified wb gene, it's entirely possible that there are several more which are able to produce chinchilla and silver shaded colors).

Sunshine and sunshine silver from the Chatterie de Sib'Adventures

I think right now goldensib is used for both "normal" golden siberians and sunshines (without inhibitor), especially since they are not always distinguished properly. Sunshine is still a new term, and not everyone uses it. I think we have to wait at least a few years to let everything sink down, every gene properly written down and then the terminology will come around. (I mean. Most likely it won't be a nice logical system even then because when are these kind of naming systems nice and accurate? Never. Lol.)

For example here's the Vistula cattery with beautiful silver and golden cats. They don't use the name "sunshine", however they use "bimetallic", which can't be anything else but sunshine.

According to the breeder, Unikol is black bimetallic (code nus), Tolstoy is black golden (code ny). The litter born from this pairing is listed in the post of the cattery as the following:

4 black bimetallic female

1 black silver mackerel female

2 blue golden or blue bimetallic male

1 black bimetallic male

What's going on here? Sunshine (including bimetal) is recessive, so Tolstoy must carry it; and since the cattery doesn't use the term 'sunshine', only golden, maybe sunshine he really is (and his color code would be more precise as 'nu'). However they had a silver kit, which suggests another type of golden (two sunshines can't have non-sunshine offspring), if her id is correct. Then Tolstoy would be heterozygous for two different golden genes. (I think it's very likely that different wide band genes are often intermingled like this, since golden programs can include all of them.)

All in all my point is that in practice goldensib can mean any wideband-type color.

Now to move onto the british allele. Actually I think CORIN wbBSH + inhibitor can gives bimetals too. But since other wide band genes are very clearly present and mixed into the corin lines, i'm pretty sure lots of copper/flaxen/sunshine/akita/whatever british cats carry several different wide band alleles, and together they can make these cats look very light.

This kitten for example was tested homozygote wbBSH/wbBSH.

On the other hand there are cats like this:

which i really can't call anything but bimetal.

Here and here are two facebook groups about CORIN british cats. (The genetic codes used there work like this: 'cop' is wbBSH, 'n' is Wb. So cop/cop is a copper, cop/n is a carrier (if the allele is fully recessive which i'm actually not sure anymore?), n/n is a non-carrier. The 'lightning gene' term is also used sometimes, it's most likely simply the inhibitor.)

I think all we know about the CORIN mutations in bengals are from this article.

Corin loss-of-function mutations, including missense mutations in domestic cats and the tiger, are responsible for autosomal recessive forms of golden coat color. In Bengal cats, AsipPb and CorinPb allele frequencies are correlated with the categorical ranking of color variation, but in opposing directions. Asiplc allele frequencies decrease and Corinlc alleles frequencies increase as coat color transitions from grey-brown to red-orange color tones across individuals (Figure 4A - [see above]).

I don't think the sorrel coloration was ever explicitly associated with CORIN mutations, but since they correlate with warm colors, it's a fair assumption.

As for your last question, i think this is about the degree of the wide banding. When the wide bands aren't that wide yet (golden blotched tabby instead of golden shaded), the black pigments are still visible.

Most organisations differentiate between four levels of wide banding (in goldens and three levels in silver which annoys me a little).

n 21-25 - black (brown) * tabby

ny 21-25 - black golden * tabby

ny 11 - black golden shaded/shell tabby

ny 12 - black golden tipped/chinchilla tabby

* = blotched/classic/mackerel/spotted/ticked

And these categories aren't discrete, this is a scale. So I think goldens with black markings are just those on the lower end of the scale.

Most likely you've already seen this website, but Little Carnivore also have nice summaries about different genes, including CORIN, which i linked. It also has lots of pictures!

#cat genetics #ask and answer #wide band #siberian wide band

[sparrowminder]

Uhh so how -do- you keep all of the gene symbols straight? I'm pretty good with the actual genes but once people start shortening them I get easily confused. I'm guessing it's just practice?

Practice helps, but there's also a particular format to learn that makes things easier.

If we have a dominant/recessive pair of alleles, we always make the dominant allele capital and the recessive allele lowercase. Ideally we pick a letter for the gene symbol that makes sense with what it does, and is harmonious with the symbols used for similar traits in other animals. One example is that in mammals, if you have a single gene that causes grey dilution, it's represented as D, even though a few genes can have this effect. We can do multiple letters for a base symbol but it's not preferred - in this case, only the first gets capitalized.

Then, if we want more dominant alleles, we use the capital letter with superscripts, and for more recessives we use the lowercase with subscripts. I, and many others, write all superscripts and subscripts with lowercase letters when converting symbols to plaintext, leaving only the first letter to tell whether it's dominant or recessive.

The extra stuff should always describe the effects somehow, even if the proper name for the color or pattern gets off kilter from the gene symbol. For example, the pattern caused by cscs is colorpoint, but the allele comes from "Siamese", the breed famous for that pattern. Similarly, cb is from "Burmese".

Usually, when genes previously considered to be separate are found to be the same, we want to rewrite them to follow these conventions. An example is white spotting, previously S, and dominant white, previously W. We folded them both into the W symbol, so now they're Wd and Ws - properly written with superscripts. Sometimes this doesn't happen, though. Maybe I should start a trend of rewriting the rex/hairless alleles to be nicer.