Question

Coat color is determined by two loci in large cats. Two pink panthers fall in love and produce a large litter of baby panthers with the following phenotypic ratios: 12/16 pink, 3/16 black, and 1/16 white. What kind of gene interaction is this?

A) Recessive epistasis
B) Dominant epistasis
C) Duplicate recessive epistasis
D) Duplicate dominant epistasis

Answer 1

The gene interaction observed in the given scenario is duplicate recessive epistasis, resulting in a phenotypic ratio of 12/16 pink, 3/16 black, and 1/16 white in the offspring.

Step-by-step explanation:

The type of gene interaction observed in the given scenario is Duplicate recessive epistasis. Epistasis refers to the interaction between different genes where the expression of one gene masks or influences the expression of another gene. In this case, the coat color is determined by two loci (genes) in large cats, and the presence of the recessive alleles at both loci (aa and bb) leads to the expression of the white coat color, regardless of the alleles present at the other loci. This results in a phenotypic ratio of 12/16 pink, 3/16 black, and 1/16 white in the offspring.