Dog Breeding Genetics : Expression of Genetic Traits
When you breed dogs, in my opinion you MUST have a clear purpose. This is your « WHY », this is what you are trying to achieve ! And when it is clearly defined in your mind, you can then use genetics to reach it. This video is part of my Genetics Masterclass for Dog Breeders, that will help you better understand how genetics work, so you can harvest its full powers when working on your dog breeding selection program !
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Genetic traits are, simply put, what you observe on an individual; characteristics like the color of the coat, the morphology, the height… Characteristics that you can indeed appreciate and evaluate.
And that’s what you focus on when you are in charge of a dog breeding selection program. You want to obtain them, you want to improve them. Because again, this is how you will reach your WHY.
There are 2 main types of genetic traits to consider :
- A qualitative trait defines a quality : that means that the different phenotypes you will observe will fall into different categories.
- A quantitative trait is something that can be measured. In fact anything that can be measured will fall into this category
Those 2 different types of traits have what we call different genetic determinism. They are influenced in a different way by genetics.
For the purpose of this video we will here ONLY focus on QUALITATIVE traits.
Qualitative traits are typically called « monogenic", which means one gene is generally involved.
A gene is a DNA sequence that is located on a very precise location - we call this locus if you want to use fancy terms - in the genome. A given gene is therefore located at a given position on a given chromosome.
chromosomes always come by pairs in a dog. Which means that for one given gene, in a dog, you will always have 2 copies of this gene
Those 2 copies can be the same… or they can be different.
Because there are indeed different versions of a gene, born from mutations happening in the species.
Those different versions… we call them ALLELES.
And for a given gene, you can have multiple alleles.
You see, there is a hierarchy between alleles.
Some are dominants, some are recessives.
The recessive allele cannot be expressed when the dominant is present.
For the gene we are interested in, color of the coat, the two alleles, those two versions of the gene the dog carries, they are the same here : when this happens, we will say that the dog is HOMOZYGOUS for the gene.
For the gene of interest, the dog carries two different alleles. It is therefore said to be HETEROZYGOUS for the gene.
Heterozygous, homozygous… Again, big words and you might wonder why you need to know this.
The fact is : those are regularly use in genetics lectures and genetics textbook. You want to feel more comfortable in this field ? You need to know what these mean, I am not kidding here.
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Link to other videos that are relevant to this topic :
▶︎ Understanding the Laws of Heredity • Understanding the Laws...
▶︎ Dogs & Genetics : Law Of Dominance • Dogs & Genetics | Law ...
Genetics in Labrador Retrievers • Genetics in Labradors
Dogs Genetics : It’s Easier to Win the Lottery • Dog Genetics : It's Ea...
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In this video, we reviewed important genetic concepts.
The final goal for you however is to grab those and use them to reach this WHY you have spent so much time defining.
That’s for the next episode, so stay tuned to our channel !
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