Pedigrees? HELP PLEASE.....this one's on Werner Syndrome.?

Seems to me, that if both parents have to be carriers, each parent would be Nw, as in N=no werner's and w=werners.

Each parent throws only one gene, so your possibilities are:

NN

Nw

wN

ww

Which means a child has a 25% chance of not getting the gene at all, a 50% chance of being a carrier as well, and a 25% chance of actually having werner's syndrome.

I hope that helps.

and I think you can label the letters how ever you want, if I were to use Ww, it would be W werner's; w no werner's.

If the parents are both Ww and are carriers then that means they do not have the disease. In order for their children to have the disease, they would need to be ww which is a recessive disease. If you did a punnenet square with Ww and Ww the possible phenotypes for the children would be WW, Ww, Ww, and ww. So only 1/4 or 25% would probably be affected by the disease.

Ok, so if the parents are carriers only and the genotype is Ww that means the condition is recessive, or else they would show the disease state. Usually W signifies the dominant allele, in this case the healthy allele, and w signifies the recessive allele, in this case the disease allele.

Do you know Punnett's squares? If you draw one with W and w on each side you will see that 1/4 of the offspring will be WW, they will be healthy. 1/2 will be Ww, they will also be carriers. 1/4 will be ww and will show the disease.

I'll try to make one here and see if it works.

........W........w

W...WW....Ww

w....Ww.....ww

On the top and the left are parental gametes, in the middle are the possible genotypes for the offspring.

Hope that helps.