[Dharkwolf]

Just for clarity and so we are all talking about the same thing...

Genetic recombination is a general category for a number of processes involving DNA. The most important and well-studied of these processes is the crossing over of two chromosomes during meiosis. Other types of recombination are conservative site-specific recombination and transpositional recombination.

So yes, when I was talking about recombination I was talking about the crossing-over of chromosomes. This process will occur at least once per gene pair (you need a pair of genes for this) every generation.

For wolf genes and dog genes, this is a very slippery field, since as we all know… dogs and wolves share a close and common ancestry. Nonetheless some people have taken the time and effort to figure out that a wolf and dog genomes are identical to within 98.8 % that is that 0.2 % of the genome is different. That in itself is not terribly much, but enough that you could measure it if you found the right markers for it.

In oblivion’s example (an F2 generation) each chromosome will have undergone at least two recombination events already, so what does this mean?

Simply put recombination by crossing-over works like this:

Consider two genes like two ropes, a white one and a blue one. You put them side by side chop them up and switch them around. You end up with two ropes, both of which are blue and white. So if the blue rope represents a blue chromosome and the white rope the dog chromosome, which is the wolf chromosome and which is the dog chromosome? Neither. They are simply new (and different) chromosomes. The only variable is where in the chromosome does the recombination take place? This seems to be “random” and so very quickly the mathematical falls apart. It also means that in the analysis of wolfblood taking into account the chromosome number is really not significant, since all chromosomes undergo recombination.

It is really the number and position of recombination events since the first cross between wolf and dog which can give you an idea of how close the “wolfblood” percentage is to the “genetic” percentage. And even that is not particularly significant, as far as phenotypes go (ie the actually animal you live with) since not all genes are expressed in the same way in all animals (environmental factors are critical in gene expression).

So I guess you could say that I stand by my previous statement. The “wolfblood” content is a fine example of an essentially meaningless (but admittedly fun to have around) number.