Epistasis

My dumb little dog oreo is an example of the outcome of epistasis. His mother was a pure black toy poodle and his father was all white, his brother ended up being black like his mother but he ended up being a mix of both the black and white genes.

Epistasis is when there is an interaction going on between two or more genes to control a phenotypes behavior. The number of genes interacting with eachoter during epistasis can be found using the Mendelian Genetics chart to find their genetic ratio. Epistasis can affect color, shape, texture and a few other features of different organisms depending on what the genes differ with when being interacted with one another. An example of epistasis that was actually observed by Gregor Mendel himself was the pea pod genetic changes where he saw changes in varying pea pod plants that had grown into different shapes, sizes and colors.

Sources:
McClean, Phillip. Gene Interactions. ndsu.edu. Retrieved September 2, 2011, from http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~mcclean/plsc431/mendel/mendel6.htm