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This is from TPR bio chapter 6
I just got really confused when doing this problem because I'm very weak in genetics, could someone please walk me through it?
The answer is C.
Let's start with the grandparents. Each of them had one which was blond/fragile, which means genotype of ssbb. All other 3 grandparents are SSBB.
Tanya's grandparents:
SSBB SSBB SSBB ssbb
Jose's grandparents:
SSBB SSBB SSBB ssbb
When SSBB and SSBB mate, the kids are SSBB. When SSBB and ssbb mate, the kids are SsBb. That means that both Tanya and Jose have one SSBB and one SsBb parents.
Tanya's parents:
SSBB SsBb
Jose's parents:
SSBB SsBb
That means that both Tanya and Jose can be either SSBB or SsBb. Remember that S and B are on the same chromosome and close to each other, which makes SSBb or SsBB very very unlikely.
We know that one of their children has fragile bones and is brunette, which means that it is ssBb or ssBB. To get the ss, both Tanya and Jose have to be SsBb.
I is true since recombination is the only way that you can get an ssBb genotype.
II is not true Tanya and Jose can easily have SxBx kids who will not have fragile bones.
III is also true because Tanya and Jose can have ssbb kids who ill have fragile bones and blonde hair.
Can you explain that? Why can't the parents be BBSs?
Since B and S are linked, the kids get them as pairs from the parents, unless crossing over occurs. From a SB|SB and SB|sb parent you can get only SB|SB or another SB|sb.
During normal myosis you will have the BS|bs first replicated as BS|BS|bs|bs and then split to four cells as BS, BS, bs and bs. Only in rare cases (the closer the genes are, the rarer) you will get some gene crossing over between the BS and bs chromosomes and you'll end up with bS, Bs, BS, bs.
So the parents can be BBSs but that's very unlikely. It's actually as likely as having a recombination happening for the kid and being Bbss.
What bothers me about the answer is that if one of the parents was BBSs, they would not have blonde kids. Crossing over can occur only in heterozygous parents.
I think that's why answer III says "may have..." instead of "will have...". We can't say for sure if Jose and Tanya are BBSs or BbSs. They could both be BbSs though, and since that is a possibility, blonde kids is also a possibility.