Dihybrid Inheritance

A dihybrid cross involves a study of

inheritance patterns for organisms
differing in two traits.
Mendel invented the dihybrid cross
to determine if different traits of pea
plants, such as flower color and seed
shape, were inherited independently
 In contrast to a monohybrid cross,
adihybrid crossis a cross between
F1offspring (first-generation
offspring) of twoindividualsthat
differ in two traitsof particular
interest.
When two dihybrids are crossed, four
kinds of gametes are produced in
equal in both male and female
 A 4x4 checkerboard can be used to
show all 16 possible phenotypic
combinations of these gametes in
the ratio of 9:3:3:1
Both parents must have the same
genotype

This method is laborious and time

consuming, and offers more
opportunities for errors.
 Round yellow RRYY x wrinkled
green - rryy
F1 genotype - RrYy
Possible gametes - RY Ry rY ry
The next step is to draw up your 4x4
checker board and do the genetic
cross as shown below
 9 round yellow: 3 round green: 3
wrinkled yellow: 1 wrinkled green
 Dihybrid test cross
As in monohybrid crosses, you cant tell
by looking at the dominant trait whether
it is homozygous or heterozygous.
So in order to find out what the
genotype is do a test cross with an
organism that has both recessive
characteristics.
If the parent is heterozygous you get a
ratio of 1:1:1:1
 If it is homozygous, all the offspring
will show the dominant phenotype
for both characteristics
 Epistasis
This is another type of genetic
interaction in which one gene modified
or masks the action of another gene
It can give rise to unusual ratios in
genetic crosses
Epitasis will change the classical
9:3:3:1 ratio.

 When epistasis is operative between

two gene loci the number of
phenotypes appearing in the
offspring from dihybrid parents will
be less than four

Genoty A-B A-bb aa-B aab

pe
Classic 9 3 3 1
al ratio
12 3 1
Domina
nt
epistasi
s
Recessi 9 3 4
ve
epistasi
s
Duplica 15
te 1
domina
nt
 In summer squash fruit color may be
white, yellow or green. White fruits
are produced by a domain epistatic
allele W. At another locus Y for
yellow fruits is dominant to its allele
y for green fruits. Dominant white
hides the effect of yellow or green. A
consequence of this dominant
epistasis is that the hybrid ratio is
modified into 12 white: 3 yellow: 1
 In humans a widows peak is
controlled by one gene and baldness
by another.
If you have the alleles for baldness ,it
does not matter whether you have
the alleles for widows peak or not,
as you have no hair
The baldness genes are epistatic to
widows peak, as the baldness genes
mask the expressions of the widows
 Chi-squared Test
If you should carry out breeding experiments on
plants you will get results that may not exactly
fit any of the genetic ratios discussed so far
Karl Pearson developed the chi-squared test as
a goodness of fit test to check the significance
of differences between observed and expected
results when using categorical data
The chi-squared test (X2) is a test of the
significance of data that consists of
discontinuous variables
 The X2 value is a measure of the size
of the differences (deviation)
between the observed result (O) and
the expected result(E)
 The test cross offspring shows the
following number of plants in each of
four phenotypes
Purple, cut - 70 purple, potato -
91 green, cut - 86 green, potato
- 77
The expected ratio of phenotypes in
the test cross offspring of a dihybrid
cross such as this is 1:1:1:1
Degrees 0f
freedom
Number of classes X2 Values
1 2 0.46 1.64 2.71 3.84 6.64 10.83

2 3 1.39 3.22 4.61 5.99 9.21 13.82

3 4 2.37 4.64 6.25 7.82 11.34 16.27

4 5 3.36 5.99 7.88 9.49 13.28 18.47

Probability(p) 0.50 0.20 0.10 0.05 0.01 0.001

that
chance alone 50% 20% 10% 5% 1% 0.1%
could

produce the
deviation
 The column and row intersect at 7.82
which is the critical value.
The X2 value of 3.23 is less than the
critical value which means that the
result is not significantly different
from the expected outcome and we
can accept the null hypothesis The
outcome is purely due to chance
effects such as random fertilization
 If the X2 value is greater than the
critical value then the probability of
the results is less than 0.05 and
there is a significant difference
between observed and expected.
If so the prediction is rejected,
refined or the experimental
procedure is reviewed to see if there
are any errors