Which is dominant, agouti or pink-eyed white?

[Lucky_&_Pepper]

If agouti is dominant, that means that Sergeant Pepper, who's agouti, is half pink-eyed white, which would explain why I have 6 agoutis and 5 whites. Right? If I bred one of his agouti children with one of his whites, would that produce more whites than agoutis? What about spotted mice; when do they appear?
(I'm not very good with genetics).

[Skratikans]

IF agouti was not linked, and the genetics was simple (which its probably a lot more complex)...and agouti was dominant (Aa or aa) and the white mice with pink eyes were recessive (aa)....from the birth I would say it went like this: Aaxaa this way the recessive gene can be expressed so you have 50-50...so...if you breed the kids which are agouti they are now Aa and then with withs you also get 50-50....
but mouse genetics is not that simple...its far more complex...this would only work if dom and rec was determined only by these traits (like in mendel's pea exp).....and its not...its way more complex..and there are so many linked traits and genes--they have mouse genetic sites for this

[Padfoot]

As Skrat said, it's pretty complicated. Mouse color is mainly determined by 5 loci (sites where the genes are). A, B, C, D and E. A is for agouti and a is for non-agouti (note that this does NOT mean that all mice that are A dominant are wild color, it means that all mice that are A dominant have an agouti coat, in which each hair is half one color, half the other, giving the mouse an undercoat of a different color from the top). b is for brown dilution, C is the dilution locus, it carries a lot of nice genes... d is the blue dilution and e is for the recessive yellow. Eye color is determined by another gene, p. The pink eye gene also dilutes the fur in many cases. Then, spotting and coat types are yet determined by another set of loci... most of the spotted mice you see around are the recessive spotting, but there are also several types of dominant spotting.

Anyway, your agouti should have all dominant genes to be wild type agouti. The albino, well.. I told you that the C locus carried a series of interesting genes, right? Well, the albino gene is one of them. When you have a pair of albino genes (cc), this sole gene will "overwrite" the rest of the genetic compsition, so no matter what else genes you have, if you have cc, it will always be albino. Well... what will you get if you mate the babies to other mouse will depend on the genetic composition of the parents of both mice(what they inherited from them). However, if you mate 2 albinos, you will always get albinos. Also, besides these basic genes that is what the breeders look into to choose their pairings, there are another series of modifier genes that give different tones to the colors, or different grade in spotting... lol... very very complicated. There are a lot of genes involved, and sometimes you mate 2 mice and you get all the same colors, and sometimes you mate 2 mice and you'll get a lot of surprises in the litter. It is actually mainly Mendalian genetics (with the basic genes), but you have to take into consideration a lot of genes, cause they interact with one another to create the color of the mouse.

[Skratikans]

opps...i meant an AA for that dom. example....but anyway...the one way you could even begin to imagine what type of litter you would get would get is if you knew the pedigree of your mice....and for that to be known, you would of bred your mice for generations and generations, done test crosses, ect....i would just not breed them, hoping that if you breed one cute mouse with another cute one, you will get a batch of cuties....who knows they might come out totally different then you have expected....as Padfoot explained....you have to know your genetics VERY well and know your pedigree...some animals, like labs, have genetics for fur coat that are quite simple....mice are not simple by any means

[Lucky_&_Pepper]

I know. At the local pet store there was a gerbil who's eyes had a reddish tinge. I thought that red eyes diluted the fur? Anyway, I think that my mice are just Aa and aa based on their kids. Thanks for the info.