Weird Het Questions

Just sitting in class bored and wondering if some of this stuff was possible.

I know het caramel and het albino are not compatible as in if you breed the two together you would just get normals.

My questions is what if you bred a visual caramel to a visual albino, would all the babies be DH for caramel and albino?? thus, if you get a little boy, you could then bred him to a bunch of different het caramel and het albino girls and get caramels and albinos depending on the girl..???

just some weird thoughts i had lol

thats how it works.

could also breed 2 dbl hets together and have a 1/16 chance of a albino caramel albino. which i would assume would just look like an albino lol.

really?? i didnt think the caramel and reg albino lines were compatible

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Originally Posted by ted1025

really?? i didnt think the caramel and reg albino lines were compatible

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As far as I am aware they are not..something to do with T+ & T- genes I think

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Originally Posted by ted1025

really?? i didnt think the caramel and reg albino lines were compatible

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They are not compatible, but the fact of the matter is that you would then have a double recessive animal, similar to a caramel glow (hypo x caramel albino), so the regular T- albino would dominate and pull all of the pigment out.

Granted it would be a breeding monster, I don't see a point in it. Similar to trying to produce a BlkEL/BEL combo.

Yea I dunno if there is a point in it, I was just bored in class wasting some time LOL

I mean I guess to someone there could be a point but again just being weird thinking about crap lol

Most everyone has always assumed that regular albino and caramel would be incompatible and that the double homozygous would look like a regular albino and be a waste of the caramel mutation. Both are probably correct assumptions and I even got pointed to a breeder who posted on doing the cross last year but at that time no results where posted. Would think if the double hets unexpectedly popped out caramel looking someone would have said something but I'd still like to hear for sure.

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Originally Posted by Bruceweb

As far as I am aware they are not..something to do with T+ & T- genes I think

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I just wanted to clarify something for you with regards to this. The T+ and T- are just the different classifications of albinism with regards to the mechanism which causes the phenotype. The mutation causing T- albinism (the more common form of albinism) turns off the production of the enzyme tyrosinase. Because tyrosinase is responsible for manufacturing melanin, the animal lacks black or brown pigment. The mutation causing T+ (or caramel) albinism results in mutated tyrosinase enzymes, which fail to produce melanin. Because of this, the animal has no black or brown pigment. However, because tyrosinase is still present in the animal's skin, the animal takes on a sort of bronze or caramel colour in the places which would have black or brown colouration on the wild-type. I believe the colour of tyrosinase is attributed to the presence of copper in its active site.

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Originally Posted by Russ Lawson

I believe the colour of tyrosinase is attributed to the presence of copper in its active site.

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Here is a sort of random thought that popped into my head when I read this. If the caramel color of caramel albinos is related to copper, would feeding them rodents raised on hog feed (high in copper) have any affect on their color?

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Originally Posted by kc261

Here is a sort of random thought that popped into my head when I read this. If the caramel color of caramel albinos is related to copper, would feeding them rodents raised on hog feed (high in copper) have any affect on their color?

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There is a possibility of this since often the production of proteins is based on concentration gradients. I actually discussed this idea in another thread located here: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?t=111563 (4th page)

FYI since that last thread I've talked with another breeder with a long string of no kinked caramels who also feeds rodents fed Mazuri 6F. He did mention some kinking his first year but I haven't heard back yet on a request if any other food could have also been used that year. I would suspect that if there is anything about Mazuri that makes it better for caramels it's an accident so hopefully we can figure it out before the formulation changes.

Also, I did find a site mentioning spinal problems in chickens exposed to copper:

http://www4.uwm.edu/cehsc/pilots/projects.html

And here is a recessive human disease requiring reduced copper diet:

http://health.nytimes.com/health/gui.../overview.html

Here is one that mentions Vitamin C deficiency (there is some sort of link between C and copper I don't understand) causing what sounds like kinking in fish:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC339614/

And for good measure here is one mentioning copper deficiency:


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...661ddf9d30e148

Good info Randy. It would be nice to get a sort of meta-analysis of several breeders' stocks of caramel albinos and compare the rodent diet in each to the number of individuals with spinal deformities (and perhaps rank the severity of the deformities as well). Also, thanks for the links! I recall hearing about that Wilson's disease before. Apparently you can actually see the copper deposits building up in the eyes of an individual with the disorder if enough accumulate there.