Toffino genetics question

So a toffino is the pairing of a toffee and an albino. Breeding single heterozygous animals for toffee and albino, i.e. Tt x Aa, is one way to get toffino offspring. Well, if you breed a normal female to a toffino male, will some of the offspring be toffino? Going by the anticipated punnet square--according to my understanding, one would get 25% toffino (TtAa), 25% normal (ttaa), 25% het toffee (Ttaa) and 25% het albino (ttAa), right?

Or would it not work that way? If they're working on the same allele, maybe it wouldn't work like that? Instead it could be distributing these heterozygous alleles separately, i.e. a single offspring couldn't get both a toffee allele (Tt) and an albino allele (Aa) which would produce a toffino (TtAa)?

Just wondering about that and havn't seen anything posted as of yet. I know that World of Morphs has a toffino x normal breeding as producing all albino and toffee double hets, which doesn't make sense.

I hope my post made sense! Its late, but I'm inquisitive and curious about the possible genetics of this awesome new morph!

You wouldn't get any visual toffinos...my understanding, based on the little info that is out there, is that you would get a clutch of all normals that are het for toffee or albino.

Toffino is a recessive trait made up of half toffee gene and half albino. If you bred a Toffino to a normal you would get a whole clutch of normals who were 50%het albino/toffee. It would be impossible to determine which babies were het toffee or het albino, which is why they would have to be sold as 50% hets for both. Hope this helps.


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both the albino and toffee are recessive, so both male and female in the breeding has to have the gene for a visual.

it hasnt been proven yet what exactly is going, but more than likely toffee and albino sit on the same locus, meaning toffino x normal = 1/2 het toffee, 1/2 het albino. or more realistically all babies will be het toffee or albino, not both not none. wont be able to tell the difference

Hmm... considering that they seem to be sitting on the same allele, I had a feeling that they would probably work by producing all normal phenotypes with heterozygous genotypes. I wonder if anyone has bred a toffino to a normal yet to confirm this hypothesis. In BP genetics, we are often completely surprised by new findings!

Hi,

The poss hets might be really hard to sell given the vast difference in price between a het toffee and a het albino.


dr del

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

Hmm... considering that they seem to be sitting on the same allele, I had a feeling that they would probably work by producing all normal phenotypes with heterozygous genotypes. I wonder if anyone has bred a toffino to a normal yet to confirm this hypothesis. In BP genetics, we are often completely surprised by new findings!

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In theory, yes, since both the Toffee gene and the Albino gene are recessive to the wild-type, and since they appear to be allelic, breeding a Toffino to a normal should produce all normals that are 50% possible het Toffee/50% possible het Albino. Won't know which until you breed them (and, from what I've read, then wait for those babies to shed a few times) ...

When you're making Punnett Squares, it's always a bit easier to think about things if the alleles for the same locus all use the same letter. So for these loci like the Toffee/Albino or the Mojave/Lesser/etc. locus, that means using subscripts for the different alleles.

I would represent them like this:

A = wild-type
a_a = Albino
a_t = Toffee

So then

AA = Normal, not het for anything [on this locus]
Aa_a = Normal, het albino
Aa_t = Normal, het toffee
a_aa_a = Albino
a_ta_t = Toffee
a_aa_t = Toffino

I wouldn't call them poss hets. Poss het in the rest of the hobby are used for something that may or may not be a het. With toffino offspring, they ARE hets, just we don't know which gene they got. I would word it as het toffee or albino.

this is of course assuming they sit on the same locus.

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

So a toffino is the pairing of a toffee and an albino. Breeding single heterozygous animals for toffee and albino, i.e. Tt x Aa, is one way to get toffino offspring. Well, if you breed a normal female to a toffino male, will some of the offspring be toffino? Going by the anticipated punnet square--according to my understanding, one would get 25% toffino (TtAa), 25% normal (ttaa), 25% het toffee (Ttaa) and 25% het albino (ttAa), right?

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Nope, it appears that Albino and Toffee are both mutations of the same gene (alleles). Under most normal circumstances genes are paired so the Toffinos have a copy of the albino mutation and a copy of the toffee mutation at the same locus. When sperm or egg cells are created during meiosis, the genes are split and each sperm or egg will get half of the gene. Since toffinos don't carry a normal copy of that gene, it has to be one of the mutations.

For instance if you have a Toffino male, all of his sperm will either carry the mutation for Albino or the mutation for Toffee but not both and also no copy of 'normal' for that gene, it'll have to be either one or the other. If he were then bred to a normal female with no mutations for that gene, all of the offspring would be normal looking babies that were either het for Albino OR het for Toffee.

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Originally Posted by dr del

Hi,

The poss hets might be really hard to sell given the vast difference in price between a het toffee and a het albino.


dr del

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I expect they'd be REALLY easy to sell, if you price them as het albino, lol.

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Originally Posted by dr del

Hi,

The poss hets might be really hard to sell given the vast difference in price between a het toffee and a het albino.


dr del

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

I wouldn't call them poss hets. Poss het in the rest of the hobby are used for something that may or may not be a het. With toffino offspring, they ARE hets, just we don't know which gene they got. I would word it as het toffee or albino.

this is of course assuming they sit on the same locus.

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I see it like this. Het albino specimens rarely take more than slightly over the price of a normal CBB IMHO, especially males! Therefore, if I was shopping for a possible het group, I wouldn't care if it was 50% prob het toffee and 50% prob het normal or 50% toffee and 50% albino. What you're really caring about in that purchase is the het toffee. I mean, if they were the same price, I would buy the one that was also prob het albino, but I don't see anyone paying significantly more for the possibility of a het albino. I would assume that their prices would basically be the same considering how expensive het and probable het toffees are.

I think I'd pay a premium for a 50/50 chance het toffee/albino male vs. just a 50% chance het toffee. If I were going to breed it to albino girls I'd want to know that I'd at least have a chance at producing albinos.

Is there a precedence for what to call those 50/50 animals where you know they are het for one of the recessive alleles but you just don't know which allele?

No, I think the Albino/Toffee complex is the first recessive complex that's been identified, so it's never come up before.

Also, I think hatchling het albino females are still going for for 125 to 150, which is considerably more than a normal of the same age. Not much compared with het toffee, though.

It may be such a difference that breeders would be better off holding back their male hets to prove them out on female albinos, in order to sell them for what they're worth. Male het toffees are still going for $3500. Even if you can only expect to get a quarter of that by the time they're proven, it's totally worth it.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

No, I think the Albino/Toffee complex is the first recessive complex that's been identified, so it's never come up before.

Also, I think hatchling het albino females are still going for for 125 to 150, which is considerably more than a normal of the same age. Not much compared with het toffee, though.

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True, but its all relative. When considering the market price of toffees, a het albino and normal are basically the same in price is what I was saying--even if the price difference may be up to 300% of the normal's price. However, I guess Randy has a point. Half albinos is better than all het albinos.

And yeah, they would probably make their money back on proving the males out the year after.

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Originally Posted by RandyRemington

Is there a precedence for what to call those 50/50 animals where you know they are het for one of the recessive alleles but you just don't know which allele?

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I wondered the same thing doing the genetics calc, I went with this...

Male:	Toffino
Female:	Normal
Percent	Fraction	Traits
100%	1/1	Het Albino/Toffee
View Results Page

I saw some 66% het toffees last year for $5500. I thought that, that's a huge price for maybe a normal.


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That sounds incredibly expensive. There are guaranteed hets and toffinos for much less than that on KS right now. But I'm not aware of the prices on them last year. I want to get a het toffee male, but I don't think I want to spend $3500 on one right now... although it is probably a good investment.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

No, I think the Albino/Toffee complex is the first recessive complex that's been identified, so it's never come up before.

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I was wondering about other species, even outside of herps. Paul H would know. Probably better if we don’t invent our own terminology like “super” if we don’t have to. I’d pick something like “100% het 50/50 toffee/albino” but that would likely confuse people and certainly doesn’t have a ring to it. I do hope some terminology exists that would cover possible hets. Like when you buy one of these males that is for sure het for one of the other what do you call his daughters, “50% het 50/50 toffee/albino”?

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Originally Posted by RandyRemington

I was wondering about other species, even outside of herps. Paul H would know. Probably better if we don’t invent our own terminology like “super” if we don’t have to. I’d pick something like “100% het 50/50 toffee/albino” but that would likely confuse people and certainly doesn’t have a ring to it. I do hope some terminology exists that would cover possible hets. Like when you buy one of these males that is for sure het for one of the other what do you call his daughters, “50% het 50/50 toffee/albino”?

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i dont see a reason to throw the 50/50 in there, kinda redundant. Saying het toffee/albino, the "/" means "or" for most other things, I mean if i say im looking for a lesser het albino/clown/hypo, you know exactly what im looking for, not a triple het. Only time I see it used as "and" is when people say their lesser/mojave BEL. but the BEL is always at the end. Also you know it's not het for both toffee and albino, because that would be a toffino.

outside of the snake world tho, "/" is used as "or" also. I talked to him/her and he/she said something.

so with that you could simply call the poss hets 50% het albino/toffee.

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

Saying het toffee/albino, the "/" means "or" for most other things, I mean if i say im looking for a lesser het albino/clown/hypo, you know exactly what im looking for, not a triple het. Only time I see it used as "and" is when people say their lesser/mojave BEL. but the BEL is always at the end. Also you know it's not het for both toffee and albino, because that would be a toffino.

outside of the snake world tho, "/" is used as "or" also. I talked to him/her and he/she said something.

so with that you could simply call the poss hets 50% het albino/toffee.

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Without delving too deeply into the grammatical implications of the slash symbol (I am pretty sure that "/" can be used to indicate and as well as "or," and its meaning will depend on context) ... :rofl:

I think the statement "100% het for albino/toffee" may be too confusing for those who are still struggling with the genetics of it.

I understand what you mean ("definitely het for either albino or toffee with a 50/50 chance of either"), but I think that the phrase "100% het albino/toffee" is too easy to perceive as meaning "het for a blend of toffee and albino" or "100% double het for albino/toffee." I have already read both misconceptions a few times.

Also, I realize that in the snake world the "/" can mean "or" or "and" (for example, ads that say things like "Male calico/pinstripe/fires" that are advertising male calicos, male pinstripes and male fires, not male calico-pinstripe-fires), but I usually think of it as meaning that the one snake carries the genes involved - for example, the phrase "het albino/pieds" usually means that all of the snakes are het for albino and pied, not albino or pied.

I don't know of any precedent in other species for this situation ... Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't polyallelic recessive loci in other species, just that I don't know of ANY other animal breeders that are as obsessed with color as we are! :O ;)

So... I was reading a BOI post on fauna, and someone mentioned a word from the boa world to describe an animal that was either het BWC or het sharp. The word they used was "parahet." Maybe this is a good word to describe the toffee/albino het issue. I don't know much about boas. Anyone have an idea of what parahet means?

Appears to be the same sort of thing, but parahet doesn't fit, since it is called that because it comes from a paradigm boa.

and we already combined the names... hmm... so are we calling them toffinohets?

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Originally Posted by OhhWatALoser

Appears to be the same sort of thing, but parahet doesn't fit, since it is called that because it comes from a paradigm boa.

and we already combined the names... hmm... so are we calling them toffinohets?

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Bahaha :rofl::rofl: Thats kinda funny the way you put it...

well, thats a shame! I liked the prefix "para" which means beside, alongside, near, or resembling. All good characteristics of this genetic phenomenon.

also got to remember toffee and albino arnt the only ones in the complex, candy also is (het candy, het albino called a jaw breaker) and a couple others are suspected of being part of it. so we got to make sure the name or phrase can also account for multiple genes.

Truth... Btw... I saw someone on king snake saying they were selling a het toffee in the title and in the ad they called it a candy. I thought they were different morphs. So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

I had a feeling that they would probably work by producing all normal phenotypes with heterozygous genotypes.

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Correct, that's what would happen.

Here's why your punnett failed: Toffino != TtAa

With the alleles being at the same locus (I guess it's not "proven", but I certainly am 110% convinced), a toffino would be "ta", albino "aa", and toffee "tt".

When they teach Punnet squares in high school bio, they generally ignore situations where there are more than two potential alleles for any given locus. If you ever did punnetts regarding human blood type however, you should have encountered it.

Rather than causing a complete dysfunction or lack of tyrosinase as seen in typical forms of albinism, the hypothesis is that the toffee allele is only partially dysfunctional. This would account for the partial melanin production in Toffinos, and as recently shown in a picture of an adult/sub-adult Toffee next to an adult/sub-adult Toffino, would also account for the slightly less melanin production in Toffinos compared to Toffees.

If you designate the albino allele as "a", the toffee allele as "a^t", and whatever other allele(s) that don't interfere with tyrosinase as "A", you can do punnetts just fine:
Normal - AA
Het Albino - Aa
Het Toffee - Aa^t
Albino - aa
Toffee - a^ta^t
Toffino - aa^t

Hope I got that all right. Anyhoo, that is a current hypothesis and the one I believe is the most likely.

- - - Updated - - -

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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Not that I can find, but anyone throwing down big bucks on candies should realize that they are very likely the same allele as toffees.

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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http://pythonregius.com/candyballpythons.aspx
Seems to be the case, by what I would dub the transitive property of "what locus is this allele on".

I would postulate that the candy and toffee morphs are the same darn allele, resulting in partial function of tyrosinase production.

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

Truth... Btw... I saw someone on king snake saying they were selling a het toffee in the title and in the ad they called it a candy. I thought they were different morphs. So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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I see the ad you're talking about, I think they just messed up, doesn't make sense. If candy and toffee are proven to be on the same locus as albino (which appears to be most likely) then they would be compatible

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Originally Posted by PsychD_Student

Truth... Btw... I saw someone on king snake saying they were selling a het toffee in the title and in the ad they called it a candy. I thought they were different morphs. So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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I believe it's bad business to misrepresent an animal just because you believe it to be the same mutation. Compatible or not, different lineage and names should be maintained unless you are the originator of the project and choose to change the name.

I've seen advertisements of het candy being referred to as het toffees when they were in fact made with a candy. I just don't support misrepresentation, and the breeders who are doing it should know better.

If I had multi-thousand dollar animals for sale, I would definitely be labeling them as their lineage has been labeled! It was probably a mistake though... At least I hope!:please:

I'm getting into this discussion late, but there are some points I'd like to comment on.

Toffee and albino may be the first compatible recessive mutant genes in ball pythons, but there are several others in other species of snakes. There are a number of others, including Sharp albino and Sharon Moore caramel in boa constrictors, ultrahypomelanistic and amelanistic in corn snakes, and motley and stripe in corn snakes. More will turn up in time. There are more than two compatible mutant genes in the ball python white snake complex. Expect more than two compatible recessive mutants to turn up. That has happened in many non-herps, so it is just a matter of time.

As far as I know, not even the pro geneticists have a simple term for a snake that is either het toffee or het albino. I'd use "either het toffee or het albino." For what it's worth, I've never liked "parahet".

As far as I know, nobody has tested albino ball pythons to tell if they are tyrosinase negative albinos or tyrosinase positive albinos.

Amelanistic in corn snakes has been tested and is tyrosinase negative. So amelanistic corn snakes have nonfunctional tyrosinase, and ultrahypomelanistic corn snakes have partially functional tyrosinase.

On the other hand, Bern Bechtel also tested tyrosinase positive albino black rat snakes. And breeding tests showed that caramel in the black rat snake was compatible with tyrosinase positive albino but not compatible with tyrosinase negative albino. Both the tyrosinase positive albino and caramel snakes have fully functional tyrosinase. Some other gene-controlled enzyme is nonfunctional (apparently) in the tyrosinase-positive albino snakes and partially functional in the caramel snakes.

Toffee and albino in royal pythons probably parallel either the situation in corn snakes or the situation in balck rat snakes. Until ball pythons are tested for tyrosinase activity, it could be either.

By the way, all alleles are genes, but not all genes are alleles. Alleles are compatible genes; they are different genes that have the same locus (location) in the chromosomes. There are three alleles at the albino locus -- the albino mutant gene, the toffee mutant gene, and the normal gene. As they have the same locus, two alleles can make a gene pair. The lesser platinum mutant gene and the mojave mutant gene are alleles. The toffee mutant gene and the albino mutant gene are alleles. But the lesser platinum mutant gene and the toffee mutant gene do not have the same locus so they are not alleles.