Chapter 10.2, Problem 1CSC

The Rainbow Connection

As Tess and Chris Giddings produced eggs and sperm, meiosis separated their homologous chromosomes. Let's assume that Tess has only "pale hair” alleles for all of the genes that might contribute to hair color, but that Chris has alleles for both dark and pale hair. During egg formation in Tess's ovaries, crossing over and separating the homologues wouldn't make any difference for the hair color genes, and all of her eggs would contain only pale hair alleles. For Chris, on the other hand, crossing over and separating the homologues would matter a lot. Some of his sperm might receive a dark hair allele for one gene, but a pale hair allele for another gene. Other sperm would have different combinations of dark and pale hair alleles, including some sperm with all pale hair alleles and others with all dark hair alleles. Can this diversity of sperm and eggs explain the diversity of the Giddings children?