Theories on pony genetics.

[nightseraph 7]

Was looking.. way to much into a certain episode, where there was some supposed sketchiness in the Cake's ancestry. So I tried to figure it out. Trying to avoid conflicts in the cake family, and from what I observed about in the regular population, from parents, to approximate population numbers of Pegasi, Earth Ponies, and Unicorns, I came up with the following table.

 

Hoping theres no conflicts, my model has approximately an equal population spread among the three kinds of ponies.

[AnonyPoni 564]

Hmm there was a thread about this eons ago. 

 

Anyway, I think pony genetics is something we probably don't understand with our lowly Bio class understanding.

 

See, we generally learn "Mendelian Genetics" which is the simple Dominant and recessive stuff. However Genetics happens to be way more complicated than that normally. Mendel was lucky to use pea plants, since they work that way XD

 

Anyway, I think the important thing to note is that the 3 different pony races aren't technically different species, since they happily breed together to have happy healthy offspring. This process seems to be natural between the races.

 

But at one point, I dont imagine it was that way. Seeing how there were three different TRIBES originally, they would have to give birth to their own, right?

 

Lemme explain

 

    U   P

U| UU UP

P| UP PP

 

^^^ So using your genetic templates, I have now mated two earth ponies (sounds weird when I say it that way for some reason)

 

So now there is a 25% chance that their kids are Pegasi and another 25% for Unicorns. Going by the tribal concept... what would they had DONE had their kids been that way?

 

 

..... though now that I think about it, you might actually be onto something there. If the three tribes were seperate enough to only EE, UU, or PP, then these Heterozygous traits would have only come up later, when they became more intergrated.

 

That said, a Pure bred Pegasus and a Pure bred Unicorn Mating ONLY making an Earth Pony doesn't make too much sense, even if they are integrated. Just with pure logic, I would think the Unicorn gene would be dominant (or maybe the pegasus one)

 

Though them canceling out does have SOME sense to it.

 

 

Ergo, I have no bucking clue XD I started this post to point out flaws with your line of thinking, but instead found merit in it and flaws in mine.

 

Woooo it's good to be back

[Guest]

I think that two earth ponies can give birth to a pegasus or unicorn providing that at least one of their ancestors was a pegasus or unicorn, because that means that there's still genetic pegasus DNA in each of them, but for the two of them they turned out earth ponies because the earth pony gene was more dominante, and when they had kids the pegasus and unicorn genes just happen to be more dominate at the time.

[Inactive01 5,299]

There's a pretty big assumption going on with your Punnett Square. I'm guessing you think there's only one allele for a specific type of pony (unicorn, pegasus, Earth). Well it's not like that unfortunately. You could try doing a Punnett Square for horns or wings because those are single genes if you're using that assumption.

 

Nonetheless, there's a whole world of developmental genetics that may explain what makes a pony a certain type. It deals with what are called control genes. There's a whole hierarchy of genes at that level that can control the pony's body shape and which body parts appear at which segments. Maybe if you had a certain modified gene at that level, then you could have wings or horns at a particular area.

 

Let's compare the presence of wings from a Pegasus with their absence in Earth ponies. Maybe there's a control gene that inhibits wing growth at the pony's abdominal segment (middle). Let's call it Ubx. On an Earth pony, the Ubx gene would be active, while on a Pegasus, that gene would be inhibited. Nonetheless, it's not that easy. There could be all sorts of other genes that could modify a pony's shape too since as I said, there's a whole hierarchy of control genes. To further the point, this Ubx gene would be at the lowest level because it controls a specific characteristic of a body part.   

[nightseraph 7]

The lack of ponies exhibiting partial characteristics implies a simple model.

That is assuming that Scootaloo doesn't have vestigial wings, etc.

We know that something funny is happening in the genetics, precluding a simple dominant unicorn or pegasus gene.

 

....Of course it might just all be moot, since Mrs Cake may just have been unfaithful, then easier models become open.

 

This is merely my theory on it, and some jumps had to be made for consistency's sake, but it hard to assume that more complicated genetics exist in the pony population, with the shocking lack of genetic diversity in the population.

I mean... a lot of ponies look a lot a like. There is even, as far as I can tell, non related identical twins!