possible way to prove if butter and lesser are same or different morph?

ok hear me out

say you have a lesser x lesser and a butter x butter BEL, you breed them...

all offspring are lesser x butter BEL's... now heres my question

say you breed the ButterxLesser offspring back to the lesserxlesser, you would produce all BEL's, but if lesser and butter are different genes, wouldn't you have a chance for a lesserxlesserxbutter offspring and yes i know theres no way to tell which would have what genes but, that lesserxlesserxbutter when it breed to a normal would produce 50% lesser x 50% lesserxbutter BEL's?

i mean it would be alot to go through and hard to prove out no doubt, but in theory, wouldn't that be how it works or am i missing something? I mean it could be a way to tell what are different morphs and what are the same without mapping snake DNA.

I mean it could prove out lots of things, fire vs inferno, black pastel vs cinny pastel, and i can't think of any others.

i mean if it does work that way imagin having a lesserxlesserxbutterxbutter... everything it breeds is a BEL, even a normal.

You could do this already with Russo and Mojave.

If I get what your saying, which is if you have a super butter and a super lesser together, they will produce all bels, then No, because they are the same morph just different lines. Now, the troubleing part, is trying to figure out whats a butter and whats a lesser from a lesserxbutter Bel:)

The way we know Butters, lessers, Mojo's, Het russo, Mocha ect ect ect.. are different versons of the same gene is because a Mojo lesser BEL when bred to a normal doesn't produce BEL's..

Of course, it wouldn't, because it has only one copy of the mojave gene, and one copy of the lesser gene.

Whether or not it COULD carry two copies of both genes is in question. Has it been tried? We assume that it couldn't, be we won't know for sure until it's tried. It would be a LONG project. lol

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

Of course, it wouldn't, because it has only one copy of the mojave gene, and one copy of the lesser gene.

Whether or not it COULD carry two copies of both genes is in question. Has it been tried? We assume that it couldn't, be we won't know for sure until it's tried. It would be a LONG project. lol

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Your not getting the point if they are different genes then when bred to a normal you'd have a 1:4 shot at getting a BEL, like with any other animal that carry's only one copy of two "different" genes like a Bee or a Pewter or a Blast ect ect ect.. So because you don't get BEL's from a Mojo Lesser BEL to normal the BEL is the homozygous form of that "gene" its just that the gene is diluted in some animals.. Lesser and butter is the same gene just different expressions of it..

Same thing with Superstripes....Superstripe to normal doesn't produce Superstripe's it only produce YB's and Spectors.. so a Superstripe isn't a combo of two genes but rather the homozygous form of the same gene in a dilute form.

guess i didn't think of the 1/4 chance thing, much easier to prove lol

ok so with all this info available, why is there still a debate? I always thought they were the same thing, but got told we'd never know until snake DNA was mapped.

still fire x inferno and black pastel x cinny pastel, anyone hear of attempts to prove them the same gene?

im also curious about the mysticxlesser, can you get a lesserxlesserxmysticxmystic and produce all BEL to a normal, or are we getting into some complicated genetics. because a super mystic is not a BEL my any means

Alleles are an important concept for ball pythons now days because we are finding so many of them.

Basically, it's the idea of different versions of the same gene.

Most mutations are different genes all together. Take spider and pastel for example. When you breed a bumblebee to a normal you get that 1:4 chance of both bumblebee and normal because the spider and pastel mutations are on two separate genes and inherited independently. But it's important to remember that each mutation has it's own normal version (allele). Genes come in pairs (one from each parent) and at the spider gene location the bumblebee has one copy of the spider mutated allele and one copy of the normal for spider allele. Likewise, at the completely different pastel gene location (locus I believe is the term) it has two copies of that gene also; one with the pastel mutation and one normal for pastel. So which copies each baby gets is like two independent coin tosses. Once for the spider locus (spider mutation or normal for spider) and then again for the pastel locus (pastel mutation or normal for pastel).

Now consider the blue eyed leucistic gene. Rather than just having two versions, the normal/wild type allele and a single mutant allele there seem to be many different mutant versions. Why this gene can go wrong so many ways I have no idea but it looks like lesser/butter (may or may not be exactly the same), mojave, phantom/mystic (may or may not be exactly the same), Vin Russo, mocha, special, hidden, and probably some others I'm forgetting or that haven't been named yet are all different mutations of the same gene. Even though some of the combos aren't white (lesser + hidden = platy, mojave + special = crystal, phantom + phantom = super phantom, mojave + mystic = mystic potion) the breeding results so far support all of these mutations being the same gene.

An animal can't have more than two copies of the same gene. If you breed two lesser\\butter BEL's together each parent could only give one version of that gene, either lesser or butter (if they are even different), and no baby could end up with more than two copies of a single gene no matter how many different versions (up to 4) exist in the parents combined or in the species as a whole (many alleles in this complex).

But proving if two similar looking animals from different lines that breed true together are the exact same mutation or just alleles is very difficult. Many claim that there is a fundamental difference between lesser and butter so even if it's subtle there might be a difference between the mutation of that common gene between those two lines. Maybe there will be a combo that will show the difference more like maybe lesser + phantom (karma) will look different than butter + phantom? Or maybe they are the exact same mutation and initial differences between the lines where due to other genes in the founders like one being more high yellow than the other and soon it will be impossible to pick out which animals are lessers and which are butters.

So, if a mojave-lesser BEL bred to a normal produces all mojos and lessers--no normals, no BELs--then it would appear that the two mutations (mojo, lesser) are on the same chromosome, but not necessarily the same gene, although it's a possibility. Pastel and spider mutations are on different chromosomes, and that's why breeding a bumblebee to a normal gets you BBs, spiders, pastels, and normals.

As for the lesser-butter BELs, this single chromosome idea could also be true (different genes for color/pattern mutated on the same chromosome), or the mutation could be in the same gene--either a different mutation of the same gene, or in a different location on the same gene. Breeding this BEL to a normal would also produce only lessers and butters.

Another musing--If these two mutations are in different genes on the same chromosome, then it is possible that they're each working in tandem with another mutation that when homozygous causes leucism. It is not necessarily due to the same lesser or butter gene mutation, but we don't know that yet. So, it is possible that lessers and butters have separate color/pattern mutations, but also have another chromosomally linked gene that wipes out all pigmentation when homozygous.

I really enjoy having this "roundtable" discussion. All of you bring so much insight and get my brains a-thinkin'. I appreciate that.

IMO--I would not smudge the lesser/butter lines. I really like lessers, and when I see one for sale that looks like a butter, I get suspicious.

Linkage of close neighbors on the same chromosome is certainly a possibility. It could explain why so much variation in this complex. I guess we will have to wait and see a crossover to confirm linkage.

Based on the similarities in the complex and the striking combos I'm thinking alleles but I thought that for pewter and was wrong and pastel and cinnamon don't appear to even be on the same chromosome (at least not close anyway).

Anyone read the sciencenews.org article a while back about the short legged dog breeds? Suppose any of the ball python mutations could be extra copies of genes? Maybe one extra copy makes a phantom, two a mojave, and three a lesser, lol.