Hidden Gene Explaination

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Originally Posted by Mischke

What’s the difference between a hidden gene, and a recessive gene, then?

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Are all genes only expressed in physically apparent ways? ;)

So hidden genes have incomplete penetrance?

I don't know anything about NERD's woma hidden gene so I'm only going to talk about RDR's Platy based on the considerable breeding results he has posted and the years that we have been discussing those results here and on other forums.

Ralph's original Platy appears to have carried two different mutations. One was lesser and the other for lack of a better name has been called "hidden". I did read once about a similar sounding mutation in rats called "dilute". I find it helpful to think of this specific hidden gene as just a very subtle mutation that apparently we can't identify by it's self with the naked eye. We already have examples of very obvious mutations like lesser and not so obvious ones like phantom so why not take it a little further to a nearly or even completely invisible mutation.

It took a while for anyone to figure out why platy X normal didn't produce more platy. But a poster from Taiwan with the handle Hahaman came up with the idea that the hidden mutation might be an allele of lesser - a different mutation of the same gene. Because the lesser could only pass one copy of each gene on it had to pick between lesser and hidden for each offspring and none could get both from the platy. At the time most thought that the 2nd mutation in Platy was recessive and inbreeding was needed to make a platy but now that butter daddy has been made without inbreeding it's sure looking like Hahaman was right.

So platy seems to be just another combo snake in the lesser white snake complex. Most of the combos are what we consider leucistic (mojave + lesser or lesser + phantom) but not all (it's now looking like crystal is a combo of mojave and "special" which is not being shown but appears to be another allele). Interestingly the homozygous phantom isn't very leucistic like but it's still a little surprising that the homozygous hidden is apparently as normal looking as the heterozygous with normal hidden. It's looking like the only effect that hidden has is when combined with another mutation of the same gene to produce the platy or butter daddy or phantom 44. I would not expect the RDR hidden to have any effect on mutations not in the lesser complex. Chemically it would probably be very interesting to know what these different mutations of the same gene are doing and why there are so many different ones (lesser, Mojave, phantom, Vin Russo, mocha, special, hidden, and probably a few others not yet named).

wonderful writeup, really cleared things up for me on the platty! I've sure been wondering what all that business was about :D