Hidden Gene

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Originally Posted by Nick Mutton

The hidden "platty" gene was easy to figure out as well. I came to that conclusion years ago and when I spelled it all out on a few forums I was ridiculed by Ralphs minions.

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Can you post a link to your explanation?

The hidden platty gene is simply another allele I the blue eyed lucy complex. Think of platty daddy as a kind of super form, although derived from two different types of hets.

All of the combos that are derived from seperate mutatant alleles of the same gene are erasy to spot, simpy put they are always "more than the sum of their parts"

A specter doesent look like anything and a yellowbelly isnt much better but the superstripe is extreme, more than the sum of its parts.

The reason for this is that the superstripe/platty/crystal all lack any normal copies of one of their genes, instead they have two different mutant copies. Those combos end up as a sort of visual "freak out".


Another concept that people need to get their head around is that a mutant gene need not manifest itself visually. Hence the possiblity that mutatant allele to the blue eyed lucy group for instance could be invisible , at least untill its paired with another mutant allele resulting in a visual manifestation, such as the original platty.

Nick

Randy, we do already have a few linked genes. Both spiders and pieds are linked to the white snake group.

Its why spider pieds are all white exept the head and why mojave/lesser/vin pieds are not what we would expect visually.

In the case of spiders, Its a lethal gene, any other explanation is total BS. Lethal genes are bad for business so they just claim "there is no super" wich is of course nonsense as we both know that from a genetic standpoint it has to exist. The answer is that its lethal and they die early in incubation.

If a super spider could make to to hatching I would be the proverbial farm it would be a white snake.

Ponder this , Spider balls appear to the the EXACT SAME mutation as the jaguar carpet python morph. Both are co-dom reduced pattern mutation, both have the exact same nuero problems and both are lethal genes. Thats whole lot of cooincidences.

In carpets the supers can make it all the way to hatching and then die in the egg, lack of lung developement the likely cause. Its 100% lethal with no hope of fixing it.

And the super jag carpets are luecistic, just as the super spiders would be almost certainly.

And then there is the woma balls (worst morph name in history) another co-dom, reduced pattern gene with a lethal white super, also with nuero problems, this is not a cooncidence.
Nick

I did get burned once on the assumption that a combo that was more than its parts would indicate that the two mutations where alleles of the same gene. When the pewter came out so wild looking I thought it was very likely the first example of a multiple mutant allele combo. When Graziani was first making a case that cinnamon would be genetic he even compared it to pastel. So I was pretty surprised when the pewters where bred and proved that cinnamon and pastel weren’t even closely linked.

Perhaps there is some chemical process relationship between the two mutations that explains why pewter is so out there. Maybe some similar relationship exists with pied and spider and also pied and lesser. However since the homozygous pied + het spider and the homozygous pied + het lesser where produced so quickly I also don't think these are examples of the sort of linking I was thinking of where two mutations just happen to have loci that are very near each other on the same chromosome. If we do eventually run into that sort of linking in ball pythons it will be hard to prove. Watch for combos that are taking way too long to make as possible evidence.

The first time I saw the suggestion that the hidden platy gene might be an allele of lesser was a post by someone from Taiwan with the user name hahaman on the spiderballs forum which disappeared some years ago. I found some references to it in 2005 posts on this forum (very entertaining reading) but I can't say for sure what year hahaman’s post was; perhaps as far back as 2003. The idea has only really started to catch on in the last year or so.

To me the lesser allele was obvious as it was the only way to expalin all the early breeding results. Its a diagnosis by exclusion.

I think all too often people theories are based on what they would like something to be as opposed to what the evidence suggests.

Its like the "paradigm" boa I spent a while talking to Mike on the phone about it not long after he first prodcued them. He was convinced that he could make an animal that was homozygous for one form of albino and heterozygous for the other. The concept that the T+ and the sharp strain T- were alleles eluded him. The result is years spent chasing something thats impossible.

Nick

This is an awesome thread guys, thank you! I just went from a laymans understanding of how morph genetics work with BPs to a much higher level of understanding.
Nick I am totally with you on the spider being a lethal homozygenous gene. The 'wobble' that so many spiders have is so indicative of an underlying neuro-genetic issue. No matter what our 'hopes' are its not likely that a super will survive unless we can somehow change the gene. Unfortuneately I'm not a genetic surgeon or I'd be right on that project.
I think it would be interesting to research clutch mortality rates in spider x spider breedings vs spider x normal.

Thanks again everyone for the great info on this thread! IMO this should be genetics sticky!

Albie