A Beginners Guide to Genetics in General

    There are many types of bearded dragons out there, in many different colors and different morphs. It's important to understand these morphs and colors and the genetics behind them, whether you're simply keeping bearded dragons as a pet or a breeder of the beautiful reptile. I will explain in this post some basics behind genetics, and then go into more details about bearded dragon genetics in this post here: Bearded Dragon Genetics

The Basics of Genetics

Genetics are pretty easy to grasp, and having a better understanding of them helps out in several aspects of life.

Every aspect of who you are—your hair color, your eye color, even your gender— are determined by these little things called genes. Genes are found in your DNA, and each gene is in charge of determining a certain aspect of who you are. One gene is in charge of hair color. Another is in charge of your skin tone. Another determines your eye color. You get the picture. Somethings are determined by multiple genes, but for the most part, everything genetics-wise that you'll encounter will be determined by a single gene.

But how do we interpret those genes? Easy. Genes are each made up of two parts. These are called alleles. Alleles can either be dominant or recessive. I can best explain those two terms in an example.

Let's pretend we're working with the gene that determines the eye color of a mouse. The dominant allele is having black eyes. The recessive is having red eyes.

Since black is dominant, we represent this allele with an uppercase B. The recessive gene, even though it's red eyes, is represented by a lowercase b, because the two alleles need to be the same letter.

If the eye gene for the mouse was BB, the mouse would have black eyes. If the eye gene was bb, the mouse would have red eyes. However, if the eye gene was Bb, the mouse would still have black eyes because the black eye allele B is the dominant allele. This combination Bb of one dominant allele and one recessive allele is called a heterogeneous gene. This just means that the gene has one of each allele. There are also homozygous dominant (BB), and homozygous recessive (bb).

Genotype is the actual genetics, such as Bb.

Phenotype is the shown trait as a result of the gene. The phenotype for the Bb eye gene would be black eyes.

Figuring Out Genetic Outcomes

We can speculate the outcome of a certain gene using what's called a Punnet Square. This is how it's used:

Let's say we're breeding a mouse with red eyes to a mouse with black eyes, and we want to speculate what eye color their babies would have. First, we make a Punnet Square, which is very simply a 2x2 square.

After we've drawn our square, we put the genetics on the outside. Our black eyed mouse has the genotype Bb, so we put the B above the left top square and the b above the right top square like so:

Next, we take the genotype of our red eyed mouse, which has to be bb because red eyes being a recessive trait has to have double recessive alleles as the genotype in order for the phenotype to be red eyes. We put the first b next to the top left square, and the second b next to the bottom left square like so:

The last step is the easiest. Just go through each square and combine the alleles. For example, in the top left square, the B on top of the square and the b to the left of it combine to make a Bb in that square.

               The Dominant allele ALWAYS goes in first

Do this for all the of square to fill out your Punnet Square.

Looking at your Punnet Square, you have figure out some estimates for these two mice's babies and what eye colors they'd have.

2 of the 4 squares are Bb, meaning they would have black eyes, so there's a 50% chance (2/4) of the babies being born with black eyes.

2 of the 4 squares are bb, meaning they would have red eyes, so there's a 50% chance (2/4) of the babies being born with red eyes.

That's just some basic genetics information. I hope it wasn't too hard to understand. Genetics comes in very handy, as it not only applies to humans, but every single animal has genetics that work in the fashion that you learned in this post. That means whether your working with dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, or bearded dragons, the information you learned today applies.

If you wish to learn more about some of the genetics and specific phenotype that are often sought after in the bearded dragon, check out this post here: Bearded Dragon Genetics