Question

Im guinea pigs, short hair is dominant and long hair is recessive. A short haired male and a short haired female produced mostly short haired offspring but a few were long haired. show how you can determine the genotypes of the parents

Answer 1

Answer/Explanation:

Let's say the allele for short hair is S and the allele for long hair is s. Since long hair is recessive, an individual would need to have two copies of that allele to show the genotype (h0m0zygous - ss). That means they must inherit one from each parent.

A guinea pig with short hair could be h0m0zygous (SS) or heterozygous (Ss)

Since a short haired male and a short haired female produced some long haired offspring, they must each have a copy of the long haired allele (s). Otherwise there is no way their offspring could inherit two copies of the s allele. The offspring must have got one s allele from each parent.

Therefore, the parents must both be heter0zygous (Ss)