# of combinations w/ alleles

[redfreakyppl]

So I'm doing this science fair project & its due SOON. Its about the genotype (the gene make-up basically) of red hair. I'm trying to come up with all the possible combinations of the genes, but I can't figure out the right equation/formula. Here's the deal:

 

There are 8 alleles for hair color.

 

HHHHHHHH or hhhhhhhh or Hhhhhhhh or hHhhhhhhh or HHHHHHhH, etc.

 

How do I find the # of combinations???

[RyanJ]

Wouldn't the answer be n! Or 8! which is 40,320 possible combinations?

 

The full formula being:

 

[math]\frac{n!}{(n-r)!}[/math] I believe

 

Where r is the number of elements to be chosen and n is the total number of objects. Because n=r it counts as a factorial.

 

And welcome to the forums by the way

 

Edit: No thats not going to work actually... We have 8 possible positions but only 2 variables, h and H...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Dak]

There are 8 alleles for hair color.

 

HHHHHHHH or hhhhhhhh or Hhhhhhhh or hHhhhhhhh or HHHHHHhH' date=' etc.

 

How do I find the # of combinations???[/quote']

 

actually, that looks like 2 alleles across 8 loci.

 

if that's the case, i believe it would simply be 2^8.