Genetically Engineered Snakes

I'm wondering; if someone were to produce an 'artificial' ball python, a morph that can't occur in nature, would you be interested in owning one?

I know that there are many people opposed to hybridization of ball pythons with other snakes, so my first instinct is that an artificial morph wouldn't go down very well, but what do you think?

Scientists have put the gene for fluorescence (which came from jellyfish and coral) into things like pigs, cats, mice and plants. They've put a gene for pest-resistance that originally occurred in bacteria into corn and rice plants. With that being said, it wouldn't be very difficult to put a gene that produces blue or red coloring (from, say, a blue tree monitor and a blood python, respectively) into a ball python.

So, lets say that tomorrow someone came out with a solid-blue ball python that they produced by splicing tree monitor genes into it. The gene is simple-recessive inheritable. What would happen?

I personally wouldn't like it. That's cheating in my book. Ball pythons have given us enough to work with genetically, and who knows what's out there that hasn't been discovered yet. Keep it natural in my opinion.

Provided it didn't give the ball some wierd personailty or abnormal / unuseual issues of any kind, I would totally want a blue colored BP! But that's just me. Be sides, the less that is given to chance i.e het the more affordable they would be. I personally wouldn't breed a geneticly made BP to a naturally bred morph though.

If it works, why not! :) Not as fun, though.

I would say no. I am totally against the production of hybrids in captivity. There are too many irresponsible people that would allow them to fall into the wrong hands, where they would pollute gene pools.

...and incidentally, just because a genetically engineered "mutant" like a blue ball python could appear to not be altered physically and behave normally does not mean it is not altered negatively in other areas.

If the ball python was healthy (neurologically and physically) then I can't see the problem. People already breed "natural" mutations that are known to have ill effects - caramels & spiders. And I really don't think a lot of the mutations we create in captivity are "natural". When I look at some of these animals showing 4+ mutations I don't see something natural, do you? These morphs are genetic abnormalities that we decide are valuable. We, in a way, are already genetically engineering ball pythons. We may not be using test tubes in a lab, but we are building unnatural animals through breeding.

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Originally Posted by KingBowser

...and incidentally, just because a genetically engineered "mutant" like a blue ball python could appear to not be altered physically and behave normally does not mean it is not altered negatively in other areas.

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True, but this can be said of naturally-occurring mutations as well. I would hazard to guess that whatever genetic mutation causes the spider pattern knocks out something important in the neurological system as well. I'm sure there are other morphs that also have "occult" deficiencies, it just either A. doesn't affect them enough to manifest clinically, or B. they're dying a little young, but nobody's caught on yet because the mutations are so new (mostly <10 years old, while the theoretical lifespan of the ball python is 20+).

In fact, depending on how the mutation was engineered, and the level of control and knowledge, it may actually have less potential for deleterious side effects than naturally occurring "knockout" mutations. For example, insertion of the GFP gene into a big chunk of non-coding repeat wouldn't be likely to do much except give the snake the GFP gene (the "glow-in-the-dark" fluorescence gene that Ash mentioned). Other knockout mutations very well might, but again, they're no more likely to do so than the naturally-occurring ones.

Any and all of these ball python morphs are already ineligible to participate in species survival programs or be used to repopulate wild populations. In fact, I think most people who work with various species for potential re-release already despise color mutation breeding. To those concerned with maintaining a captive pool for potential re-release, mutation breeding is almost (though perhaps not quite) as bad as hybridization and genetic engineering would probably be viewed as no different -- bad, to them, but no worse than the whole "morph industry" itself.

The one thing that genetic engineering has (as does hybridization, to a lesser extent) is an ethical "ick factor" -- it's perceived as "meddling" in a way that the propagation of naturally-occurring mutations doesn't, for some reason. IMO, however, this is really just a stigma and isn't based in any real fact, because as ColdBloodedCarnival points out, selective breeding already IS meddling ... A lot.

That having been said, I can appreciate the stigma against the genetic engineering "ick factor." Hollywood has done a lot to propagate it (mad scientists! Oh no!) and there HAVE been some very unfortunate incidents with GMO plants cross-pollinating with wild populations. Ball pythons aren't plants, and if you believe that they can colonize the USA then you must be working for USGS ... But I still can see why people would be more opposed to GM snakes than naturally-bred mutations.

And I don't have time to proofread this, so ... Apologies in advance for spelling errors or lack of clarity. :O

PS. In the interest of full disclosure, I have a pet GFP axolotl named Glowy and almost took a job with Genzyme. So ... :rofl:

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Originally Posted by Serpent_Nirvana

I have a pet GFP axolotl named Glowy

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SRSLY? Where can I get one?:D

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Originally Posted by Ash

I'm wondering; if someone were to produce an 'artificial' ball python, a morph that can't occur in nature, would you be interested in owning one?

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Heck, yeah. lol
I love genetic engineering, I think it's fascinating, and I would totally breed fluorescent pieds.

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Originally Posted by cboocks

SRSLY? Where can I get one?:D

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I got mine from Michael Shrom -- he is a very reputable breeder of axolotl morphs as well as rare salamanders and newts. He I know he vends at the White Plains NY show (which is where I got Glowy) as well as Havre de Grace and Hamburg, but he's also got adds on KS as well. :) (Probably not safe to ship 'phibs in this heat, though!)

Here's the only hang-up I have with the 'ick' argument.

Imagine a world where all the various domestic dog breeds had never come to exist. There's just the wild wolf. A scientist gets some wolves, does some genetic modifications and produces some chihuahua, pug, and greyhound puppies. I'm betting that there'd be a huge backlash, people would say the scientists are playing god, messing around with natural things that they have no business going near.

Well, it didn't happen that way. We've produced the same thing, but over thousands of years of selective breeding. How is what the imaginary scientists did any less ethical?

I'd say that if captive breeders really focused on it, we might be able to produce blue/red ball pythons through selective breeding in a few hundred generations, using mutations that nature produces at random. I personally don't see any harm in pulling it off in a little less time. Genetic engineering might even be able to produce some less conspicuously modified pet snakes, such as ones that never go off the feed, or are immune to IBD, or produce hardier eggs.

Ash I do agree with you -- although I tell you what, I've met a lot of people lately who I honestly think believe that the "meddling" that was done 1000's of years ago to create our domestic animal breeds was somehow morally wrong ... :confused:

Although, the one problem I do have with this theoretical idea -- and one of the things that I think makes selective breeding so darn cool -- is that at this point, ALL of the genetic engineering that is currently being done is that of the "cut and paste" variety. We know how to manipulate genetic code -- we can take swatches of code that we know, through trial and error, to be genes that code for certain proteins -- but we don't know how to read or write it. And my gosh, how can we be expected to when there is SO much more to genetics than the simple central dogma (DNA --> RNA --> protein)!

So right now, all we can really do is stick genes into the genome to get proteins that we want (like green fluorescence protein, etc.) or knock out existing known genes. We can probably do a bit more, heck, maybe a LOT more (things change every year and my last GOOD biotech class was a few years ago, ha!), but there's still so much we don't know that we can't predict with total accuracy what exactly our "meddling" is going to do. For example, we might stick a gene for blue pigment into the snake genome hoping it gets expressed in the melanocytes, but instead it gets expressed in the neuron, interacts with some key process and makes the snakes loopy.

So, while I don't think it's morally wrong per se, I do think there's a lot we don't know right now and to go sticking genes in for purely cosmetic reasons when we're still at such a rudimentary level of understanding is questionable, IMO. (Though if they're already there for research purposes -- like GFP axolotls and mice -- I don't mind owning them :) )

All of this being a totally hypothetical discussion, of course, unless someone feels like bankrolling my glow-in-the-dark leucistic project. :8:

Hmm ... I just said completely the opposite thing in this post than in my first post, didn't I? Oh well sorry about that.