tamagotchivibes-blog

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Gramps

Gramps is my V3 whom I recently started due to my grandpa not feeling well, his battery died this morning so i imagine he went right back to when he originally evolved yesterday so it maybe tomorrow morning when he evolves. 

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Magical Meets generation 4

Another generation is all grown up! So far very cute mixes. My third generation was dominantly Hakaemotchi (the moo cow Love it!), and my second generation was a mix between mametchi and nifuwatchi, 

                                 Magicaltchi      result genotype head           Ni Ha       Mg Mg            Ni Mg body           Ma Ha     Mg Mg            Ha Mg eyes           Ma Ha      Mg Mg            Ma Mg Accessory  Ni Ha       Mg Mg             Ha Mg

Mametchi - ma

Nifuwatchi- Ni

Hakeamotchi- Ha

Magicaltchi0 Mg

So far I am loving my meets adults a moo cow and a cute little witch. And these mixes have thrown a wrench in the idea that mametchi traits are ridiculously dominant - unless they are not dominant over the moo cow genes of hakaemotchi or there is a degree of randomness in the observable traits and the appearance of dominance traits or the meets is a bit better at mixing than the mix but we shall see!

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Mix generation 16

Generation 16 - Clara is all grown up and she is a unicorn butterfly!

                                butterflytchi    result genotype head             Sg Pk      Bt Bt         Pk Bt body             Me Pk      Bt Bt        Me Bt eye              Sp Pk        Bt Bt        Sp Bt Accessory   Me Pk       Bt Bt         Pk Bt

Sg -Shiguremetchi

Pk- Pikagorotchi 

Me- memetchi

Sp - speplanetchi 

Bt- Butterflytchi

The bolded ones are the observable traits -

The memetchi body has persisted for 4 generations and this time it was replaced by the butterflytchi, the speplanetchi eyes persisted for 3 generations. Pikagorotchi was the adult my previous adult mixed with (so those haven’t really persisted for all that long). 

The results of this - the memetchi body is dominance over the speplanetchi, shigurehimetchi, and the pikagorotchi body, and the butterflytchi body has dominance over the memetchi body. Or it has dominane over any other trait over a certain number of generations (4-5 seems to be the limit i have observed) or its a tad more random over which body is observed. 

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Breaking down the Mix

The next step to figuring out the genetics of the mix (and meets) is to break them down. What do I mean by that? Well i mean to break down the characters into their traits.

Each adult has four traits (not counting colour) that has the potential of being passed on the the next generation: Body, Ears/hat, eyes, and accessory. Example 1 - Mametchi

Mametchi has the classic mametchi body (big round head small ish body the cheeks and smile), the classic mametchi ears, and his big eyes. Mametchi does not have an accessory.

Example 2 - Nijifuwatchi

Nijifuwatchi has her fluffy body (the fluffy head round head, cheeks, smile, small arms, and the fluff that hides her feet), she has her rainbow hair and fluffy ears and the star, She has her sparkly cute eyes, and her accessory are her wings.

Most adults have accessories but not all do - in that case we would call that an unobservable trait.

Next I use shorthand to denote these traits when writing out the genotypes of my mixes. For mametchi Ma works, and Nifuwatchi N. As they are right now they are pure breeding - they have two copies of the same allele for each trait. (Ex. Mametchi would be Ma Ma for the body gene) 

Because they are two true breeding adults  there is one genotypic outcome 

Body Ma N

ears Ma N

eyes Ma N

accessory  Ma N

One allele comes from mametchi and one from Nifuwatchi. Now becauase we don’t know the dominant nature of each allele in respect to one another or if there is a random chance of which one will be observed there are quite a few observable or phenotypic outcomes that writing all of them out would get messy.. but here are some examples they are clearly not all of the potential outcomes. But you can see the point there are lots of outcomes.

Body:          Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N

Ears:           Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N

Eyes:           Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N

Accessory: Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N; Ma N

And this is the basics of how I break it down to see inheritance patterns and such. I take the genotypes of the two parents and cross them (I don’t always do this sometimes I just take the genotype of the offspring when it is an adult (all traits are observable) and take note of the offspring phenotype. This is the long story of how I do it so when I start going on about traits and such you don’t get too confused. I will of course state which adults my short hand denotations refer to as well as the trait and give whatever observations I have mainly on the longevity of the trait (how many generations that specific trait persisted for ex. how many generations did the mametchi ears persist etc) 

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The beginning

I am obviously a tamagotchi fan, and I am a molecular biology graduate student and this is the merging of two things that I love. Tamagotchi and science. Over the years I have done a few experiments to gain a deeper understanding of my favourite virtual pets.

This is no different. This time however I am working on the genetics of the tamagotchi mix and the meets. As it is the mixing of traits that results in a unique character that piques my interest and makes my biology loving brain think does it follow Mendelian genetics or is there something deeper a foot?

A quick review of what it is that I will be mostly talking about (as not everyone has spent years studying molecular biology and genetics). Our genetic material codes for our appearance, or our genotypes affect our phenotypes. And in terms of tamagotchi there is nothing more complicated than that genotypes determine phenotypes (or genes determine appearance). 

There are different copies of genes (alleles) that give different appearances, brown eyes vs blue eyes for example. Eye colour is determined by a single gene, but having different copies of this gene results in different phenotypes. Or different genes results in different eye colours. 

Humans are what is known as diploid, we have two copies of every gene (every chromosome has a pair, or our genes follow the buddy system). So one person can have two of the same allele (two of the same version of the gene), two different version of the gene, For eye colour, someone is blue eyes has two copies of the blue allele, whereas someone with dark brown eyes has two copies of the brown allele and someone with hazel eyes has one copy of blue and one copy of brown. 

Because there are two copies, we have inheritance patterns, which version of a gene are dominant over others. The dominant versions will be the observed phenotype, while the recessive version is masked by the dominant version. This is why hazel eyes appear to be lightish brown. The brown eye version is dominant over the blue eye version. This is also why blue eyes tend to be rarer, it takes two copies of the blue eye version to result in blue eyes. 

For most genes there is what we call  random assortment of the alleles. For each gene  one allele will come from the mother and one from the father. This will result in a new combination of alleles in the offspring. Dominant alleles will mask recessive ones resulting in a phenotype that will have traits of both parents (not always equal of course). 

Granted human genetics is infinitely more complicated than tamagotchi genetics, I am looking into if there truly are traits that are dominant - they mask other traits - recessive - they are masked by other traits or if there is a 50/50 shot in which trait will be observed and which one will be masked. 

From what I have experienced there haven’t been true dominant or recessive traits, traits that are always observed and masking others. There seems to be a high degree of randomness as to what the final adult will look like. But I could be wrong. It is very possible that the Mixes are slightly more complicated than pure random assortment and random dominance. 

So stay tuned while we figure it out and maybe learn some science along the way!