Hey Karen!

Happy Monday!

I’m learning about genotypes and have been practicing punnet squares.
I was curious about cats, so I did some research and thought this was neat.

I have two cats from the same litter, they are brothers.
Although they are brothers, they look completely different.

Pepsi – grey cat

Phoneix – striped cat

In cats, all striped cats contain the A allele and is dominant to a allele.
Homozygous aa cats are non-striped.

Phoenix heterozygous genotype is Aa

Pepsi’s homozygous recessive genotype is aa
I have a third cat, her name is Cuddles.
She is a Calico.

The sex-linked orange -gene, also called the red gene is found on X chromosome. The O allele
results in the orange color, whereas the B alle results in non-orange fur (usually black fur)

Males only have one X chromosome, so they will only have one allele of this gene. Which is why
calico male cats are rare and can be considered to be a mutation of the gene.

Females with either be:

OO (orange)
BB (non-orange)
or
OB (showing both orange & non-orange patches)

Cuddles homozygous dominant genotype is OB

Fiumera, H. L. (2021, March 24). Cat genotypes and phenotypes.docx. WSKG. Retrieved
October 23, 2022, from https://wskg.org/the-gene-educator-series/cat-genotypes-and-
phenotypes-docx