Chapter 3, Problem 38P

You picked up two mice (one female and one male) that had escaped from experimental cages in the animal facility. One mouse is yellow in color, and the other is brown agouti. (Agouti hairs have bands of yellow, while non-agouti hairs are solid-colored.) You know that this mouse colony has animals with different alleles at only three coat color genes: the agouti (A) or non-agouti (a) or yellow (A ) alleles of the A gene (A > A > a; A is a recessive lethal), the black (B) or brown (b) alleles of the B gene (B > b), and the albino (c) or non-albino (C) alleles of the C gene (C > c; cc is epistatic to all other phenotypes). However, you don’t know which alleles of these genes are actually present in each of the animals that you’ve captured. To determine the genotypes, you breed the two escaped mice together. The first litter has only three pups. One is albino, one is brown (non agouti), and the third is black agouti

a.	What alleles of the A, B, and C genes are present in the two mice you caught?
b.	After raising several litters from these two parents, you have many offspring. How many different coat color phenotypes (in total) do you expect to see expressed in the population of offspring? What are the phenotypes and corresponding genotypes?