Suggestion: [Alleles and Punnett squares]

1st Official Post

    Name: Alleles and Punnett squares - a more realistic breeding style for plants


    Description:
    Exactly what it sounds like. For those unfamiliar with alleles and Punnett squares, what I'm talking about is dominant/recessive traits for the plants. For instance, let's say the allele for tall plants was recessive (t), and the allele for short plants was dominant (T).
    Plant Z has the genotype Tt - meaning that it is a short plant, but when bred with another Plant Z (that is also Tt) there would be a 1/4th chance of a Plant Z that was tt - a taller plant of the same species. The method for figuring this out can be done with probability, but I like Punnett squares personally.


    I don't know how to make tables in this forum, so forgive me if this is difficult to follow.
    When two Heterozygous (Tt) plants are crossed (bred) the square would be as follows

    (ignore the periods, they are there because apparently this editor doesn't like to keep extra space's where I put them.)
    ...|T | t |
    ----------------------------------
    T | TT| Tt |
    --------------------------------------
    t | Tt | tt |


    This produces a 1:2:1 genotype ratio - TT (1/4 chance of this seed) would be a short plant that would donate two of the T (shortness) allele to offspring.
    Tt (2/4 chance of this seed) would be a short plant, but would have both the T (shortness) and the t (tallness) allele to donate to offspring. tt (1/4 chance of this seed) would be a tall plant, that would donate two of the t (tallness) allele to offspring.


    The Phenotype ratio (how it looks) would be 3:1 - 3/4ths of the offspring would be short, and 1/4th would be tall. This could apply to various other traits, such as color, ability to survive in certain biomes, how fast the plant grows, and really any other form of trait.


    This would give a little more challenge to breeding the 'best' plants - have the advantageous or desirable trait be recessive, and the less desirable trait be dominant.


    I hope that this idea won't be shot down immediately, as this is something I'd love to see happen. If this idea is taken under consideration and clarification is required, just ask, I'd be happy to help.


    Edit: trying to make the square less format issue-y ?(

    AFAIK, the current Plant system that Alblaka is working on is heavily chance weighted, but if it uses Mendelian genetics I have no clue. He has some sort of format though, so you may or may not get what you want in the game. You can cross-breed plants in an upcoming release tho.

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    Alblaka in a Lightning Rod suggestion thread...[/size]

    < has a biology degree and thus feels like an authority on this matter


    Generally any trait that we would recognize comes from a huge number of genes- punnet squares rapidly lose their usefulness as you have less purebred organisms. Even so if you use a fairly small range of values (height of the plant is 1 to 5) you might be able to get a fair number of genes into the simulation- just kind of try and have enough that you could have a standard bell curve of outcomes after you multiply them all together for the final outcome.

    I should mention that the 3:1 ratio is if you've got recessive/dominant traits. You can have codominance and even run into a stranger effects- but that kind of stuff should probably not be anything players could spot just doing a few crosses. What you might want to do though, are some dominant traits that are lethal in homozygous individuals. I think a common example of that in humans is a form of dwarfism: with dd as a normal person and Dd / dD being a dwarf all the DD individuals just die before birth so you never see them.




    Now as for plants I'd like to see some pH and salt brought into the equation. Plants actually have a lot of funky conditional growth for trying to struggle through those things (the plant is much smaller of course but this kind of thing would just outright kill a mammalian sort of developmental plan.) You could do all kinds of fun stuff with the genetics for handling those things- give the players all kinds of opportunities to select for some really fragile genes as they tried to make the plants grow tall and fast yet croak if the salinity went a little bit ooky.

    • Official Post

    I didn't even bother going with Mendel's rule, it just wouldn't reach the desired effect.
    The current implementation takes patience and turns it into Melons. And other stuff.