Genetic Codes - for Cats

[Flamelight13]

Hello, i don't mean to be a pain, but i have a few questions and an suggestion for the genetics.

i recently brought two cats, which i haven't registered yet, because of these things i wanted to clear up before i tried registering them.

the two cats are G2 animals, their parents being Foundation cats. the cats' genetic code that i got wasn't complete and when trying to go back to their parents' genes, i found that i still couldn't find out the full details of the genetic code.

for instance, the cat Glowing Thriller at Evolution is said to be a cream classic tabby and white. but in his genetic code, there is no whiting genes. i cannot tell whether he is a 0-50% white or 50-100% white. i can say that the kitten in question was not given white by either parent which would make glowing a 0-50% white cat, but if he had no children, how could one tell?

this kittens' parents dont show the genes for the colourpointing. as they are not colourpoints themself, i now they may be carriers for colourpoint or sepia, or not at all, but i cannot see this at all.

the last question that i have, is about the colour names that the kittens have themselves. for instance, both kits have the name Spotted in their name, but their genes are in fact only Spsp, which is for broken tabbies,  opposed from spotted which is SpSp. because i have completely no clue with the showing side of things, are they called this because thats what it is called in the showing side of things?

i really don't want to sound terrible and im not having a go at anyone, i just thought that i would bring this up to you to potentially give all foundation cats and bred kittens a full genetic code to then be able to better see what each cat is carrying etc which would be better for breeders.

thank you for reading this 

[Tia]

Thank you for the suggestion as we always welcome then and the hope is to create a site where people can voice opinions on topics and help to further the site and it's running! I hope this does offer some clarity.

For the incomplete genotypes, you assume if it's not shown that the animal does not carry those genes. This is done because we use calculators to run litters and get outcomes for those breedings. The program is old (though we try to update genes manually to the best of our abilities when needed), and often time putting in the complete genotype will either slow it down, or crash the program. As you can imagine, doing these by hand would take a considerable amount of time, for genes that the cat simply doesn't have.

The genes are added in as needed second generation. As I said, we assume that if the gene isn't shown the cat doesn't carry it. So all breedings where one parent has a gene and the other doesn't are considered homozygous for not having it. Ie, we don't put ww in for a non-white cat, however if they were bred to a WW cat, we would assume all kittens would be Ww and add that into the kittens genotype.

Basically, if a cat is carrying hidden genes (which can happen in registration) it will be listed. If it's not, it will not be.

With the amount of white a cat has, that should be listed in the genotypes. If they are not, that is a mistake and we will look into it. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

Spotted tabbies I'm going to need more information on. The original name for spotted tabbies was broken tabbies because the gene works to break up the mackerel and classic/blotched tabby markings. As far as my research has shown broken tabbies are just a spotted tabby. This research has shown there can be slight differences in how the pattern is expressed (ie, more defined spots as a SpSp or more spots in general then Spsp) but they aren't so different as to be classified as a completely different colour.

That being said, I'm by no means an expert on this. If you have other information from reliable sources on this, the moderation team is willing to look into it again and have a discussion on it. However, at this point this is what we know.

I hope this helps!

-Tia

[Flamelight13]

Thank you for answering my questions, it's been very helpful and I understand why they're not shown in full now. Would I be able to 'edit' in the genes that the cat does not carry to make a full gene code, for example,

Genotype: cscb bbl dd Spsp
(for my own reference) Full Genotype: LL RR ReRe bbl dd XoY Spsp cscb

when registering a cat?

[Tia]

For complete genotypes that is fine to a point, as we do allow for members to write their own. However, we do ask that you keep the genes limited to those that are naturally found in the breed. Meaning, if you'd like to list marble in the genotype for Bengals but have it as not being carried or expressed that is fine, however when it comes to something like bobtail which Bengals don't generally carry we'd prefer that to be left out. This is because some of us are still learning feline genetics and it gets confusing to remove these genes before breeding to keep the programs from going crazy, and keeps mistakes from happening trying to put them back in.

That being said, if you'd like to keep them on the cats pages in full that you create or in your own records as a complete sequence with every gene you are welcome to. For official purposes though we prefer to stick to those naturally occuring in the breed. Hopefully that makes sense!

-Tia