Question about Genetics

Hello all, I am pretty new to ball python morphs and find them really interesting, will probably buy some soon and start breeding to see what I can come up with. But as I was looking around today I couldn't get a question out of my head... I was using a Genetic Wizard to see what different combos would give, and I understand why you can have a het albino for example, but how do you know it is a het albino? From what I see it looks the exact same as a normal. So if you breed a normal and a het albino, you can get a het albino and normals, but how do you tell the different? I also see websites advertising selling 'Pastel Enchi 100% Het Albino', but how do they know that snake is 100% Het Albino if there are going to be others in the clutch that look the same but are not het albino? I would think it would be too costly to have a genetic test (if you can even do that) for every snake.

I would appreciate it if you could enlighten me! Thanks in advance!

In this order: You're right - you visually can't tell hets from non-hets - you need to know about the parents to be certain; This time you end up with all animals possibly being hets (50% chance for every hatchling) because you can't separate them visually or genetically without breeding them when they are old enough to do so; 100% het means that one of the parents was an actual albino (or that it's proven to be a het because it's produced albinos of its own) - no need for a genetic test.

Did I lose you yet or do you feel enlightened? ;)

That makes since. But in the Genetic Wizard I put in Het Albino and a Normal. It said half would be het albino and have normal... How would you know which is which?

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

That makes since. But in the Genetic Wizard I put in Het Albino and a Normal. It said half would be het albino and have normal... How would you know which is which?

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You wouldn't. Statistically, every hatchling in that clutch has a 50% chance of being an albino. In reality, only 50% (give or take for randomness) will actually be het albino. Until they are bred themselves, every baby from that pairing is considered 50% het albino. It's like a Schrodinger's cat situation. :)

Edit: For what it's worth, this is where the Genetic Wizard falls short as a teaching tool.

Hmm. So I would want to breed every offspring out of the clutch to a Albino, and if an Albino comes out, then I know it's a 50% het? If so that makes this a lot more difficult than I thought.

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

Hmm. So I would want to breed every offspring out of the clutch to a Albino, and if an Albino comes out, then I know it's a 50% het? If so that makes this a lot more difficult than I thought.

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If you got an albino from them, then it would change from being considered a 50% possible albino to being an actual het albino (a 100%).

Anything less than100% and you're talking about the chances are that it's carrying the albino gene - its chances of being a het. Once you prove that it is, by producing an albino offspring from it, then you know that it's an actual het.

It's honestly not that confusing at all once the light bulb clicks on and you're able to understand the difference between possible hets and actual hets and how each are produced.

Ohhhhh ok. I had it stuck in my mind that if something was 33% het something then that meant it carried 33% of that gene lol. But I understand that now! Thanks a lot!

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

Ohhhhh ok. I had it stuck in my mind that if something was 33% het something then that meant it carried 33% of that gene lol. But I understand that now! Thanks a lot!

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There it is!

Short version:
Two albino parents = all albino offspring
One albino parent, one het albino parent = some albino offspring, some 100% het offspring
One albino parent, one normal parent = all 100% het offspring
Two het albino parents = some albino offspring, some 66% possible het offspring
One het albino parent, one normal parent: all 50% possible het offspring

Makes a lot more since now. But I guess I'm out of luck with my two BPs... they both look normal(Even though one is darker than the other), but the only way to find if they had anything het would be to breed them alloott or get a test huh?

Brace yourself for a bit of reality. Unless you bought them as anything other than a normal ball python, there's pretty much a zero percent chance that they're anything more than that.

Normals can be awesome in their own right though. If you can, post some pictures and share your snakes with us. :)

Snark:
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...img_0010_2.jpg

Lucy: (She is shedding real soon)
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...img_0011_2.jpg

Both together:
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...img_0007_2.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...img_0005_2.jpg

I got Snark for christmas about 5 years ago, and bought Lucy on craigslist about 2 years ago.

And there are visual hets.

A normal-looking het (generally just written "het") occurs when a recessive mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. That's the most common type of het and has been well covered in this thread.

A snake is a "visual" het when a dominant or codominant mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. These snakes do not look normal.

There is no 50% or 66% probability het with codominant mutant genes. You can tell what the snake's genes are just by looking at the snake.

With dominant mutant genes, a snake with two copies of the mutant gene (a super) looks like a snake with a mutant gene paired with a normal gene. In such snakes' matings, the probabilities are generally expressed as the probability of getting a super. The probabilities only apply to the baby snakes that do not look normal. The normal-looking snakes have two copies of the normal gene and are genetically normal.
0% probability super = 100% probability het. Occurs when a visual het or super is mated to a normal.
33% probability super = 66% probability het. Occurs when two visual hets are mated.
50% probability super = 50% probability het. Occurs when a super is mated to a visual het.
100% probability super = 0% probability het. Occurs when two supers are mated.

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Originally Posted by paulh

And there are visual hets.

A normal-looking het (generally just written "het") occurs when a recessive mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. That's the most common type of het and has been well covered in this thread.

A snake is a "visual" het when a dominant or codominant mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. These snakes do not look normal.

There is no 50% or 66% probability het with codominant mutant genes. You can tell what the snake's genes are just by looking at the snake.

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You're going to have to forgive me for giving the OP exactly as much information as was needed to answer their question as it relates specifically to this hobby. Not everyone wants to sit through a genetics lesson in order to understand the terminology in full detail. ;)

That's okay, I'll just come up with more questions lol.

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Originally Posted by paulh

And there are visual hets.

A normal-looking het (generally just written "het") occurs when a recessive mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. That's the most common type of het and has been well covered in this thread.

A snake is a "visual" het when a dominant or codominant mutant gene is paired with a normal gene. These snakes do not look normal.

There is no 50% or 66% probability het with codominant mutant genes. You can tell what the snake's genes are just by looking at the snake.

With dominant mutant genes, a snake with two copies of the mutant gene (a super) looks like a snake with a mutant gene paired with a normal gene. In such snakes' matings, the probabilities are generally expressed as the probability of getting a super. The probabilities only apply to the baby snakes that do not look normal. The normal-looking snakes have two copies of the normal gene and are genetically normal.
0% probability super = 100% probability het. Occurs when a visual het or super is mated to a normal.
33% probability super = 66% probability het. Occurs when two visual hets are mated.
50% probability super = 50% probability het. Occurs when a super is mated to a visual het.
100% probability super = 0% probability het. Occurs when two supers are mated.

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If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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Nope. Dominant and co-dominant (more correctly: incomplete dominant) genes are an on/off thing. Either they have been passed along and will be seen in the offspring or they won't - there's no middle ground. There's a 50% chance at passing along these genes, just like the recessive example we used with albino, only you'll be able to see a yes/no answer right away. You also don't need a copy of the gene from both parents to get full expression:

• Trait passed along from a single parent = Het Albino (recessive example) = Pastel (incomplete dominant example) - we don't use the term "het Pastel" because it's understood as such
• Trait passed along from both parents = Albino (recessive example) = Super Pastel (incomplete dominant example) - not all genes will have a super form - we call those genes "dominant"

Hope this helps!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

That's okay, I'll just come up with more questions lol.

If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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Normal and banana are both dominant traits and very different from each other. In the case of most ball python morphs, you don't actually see a visual mix of two genes. The babies will come out either all normal or all banana with no normal-banana whackjob thrown in there (usually, sometimes paradoxes happen, but those follow no known genetic rules).

For clarification! There are three types of morphs; Recessive, dominant, and incomplete dominant (also called co-dominant). In recessive genes, two copies of the gene are needed to produce visible offspring. If one parent is homozygous (has two copies of the gene and displays it visually) and is bred to a non-carrier of the gene, all offspring produced will be het for that trait (remember punnet squares? They come in handy here)

In dominant traits, such as pinstripe, a single copy of the gene is visually expressed. This is like brown hair in humans, BB (homozygous) or Bb (heterozygous) will both give you visually brown hair, but it won't look any different either way.

Incomplete dominant, or codominant, is interesting in that the same rules apply as in recessive, except that a heterozygous offspring still expresses a visual version of that trait, just not in such a way as the homozygous version.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

That's okay, I'll just come up with more questions lol.

If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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Look up punnet squares, as they may help you understand that part a bit more if you're a visual learner. In punnet squares, each animal you consider is broken into 2 parts, and when you pair A with B, the babies inherit each piece of the parent.

Co-doms are 1 normal and 1 co-dom.. (Pn)
Normals are 2 parts normal.. (Nn)
Supers are 2 parts of the co-dom... (Pp)
Recessives are just like Supers, but rather than saying they're 2 parts co-dom, we call them 2-parts recessive. (Cc).
(the letters in parentheses are just examples of what it would look like in a punnet square).

Recessives are the same as supers. The difference is that if a snake is 1 part co-dom and 1 part normal (totaling 2 parts), that snake will look like the co-dom mutation, not normal.

In your example, you're doing banana x normal... Start with the banana (Bn). B stands for banana, and n stands for normal (no mutation). Next is the normal (Nn). If you break down all the potential offspring, the only combinations you'll get are "Bn"s and "Nn"s (bananas and normals).

However, if you pair a banana to a banana, things get more interesting! You can get Bn, Bb, and Nn... (bananas, super bananas, and normals).

sorry if i confused you... here's a link I used when I was first getting into morphs and genetics and junk. Don't rely too heavily on WOBP for your genetic research. It's a good tool to see the different kinds of morphs and combos, but yeah.. As Eric mentioned, falls short in the genetics department.

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/gen...recessive.html

New England Reptile Distibutors are first rate breeders, but they are not first rate geneticists. :( Much of their page is good, parts are hard to understand, and parts are just wrong. The trick is figuring out which is which.

Here are links to pages that I consider better than the New England Reptile Distibutors page. The bottom link is to a book that can be downloaded free of charge.

http://www.ballpython.com/index.php?page=genetically

http://ballpython.ca/gallery/genetics-101/

http://www.corncalc.com/dcr.html

http://www.redtailboas.com/f115/no-f...s-guide-53782/

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook

At the genetics level we breeders are on, codominant and incomplete dominant can be used interchangably. Codominant is preferable (IMO) because it has fewer letters to type.

By the way, every gene is either a normal gene or a mutant gene. A normal gene is the most common gene at a given location in the chomosomes in the wild population. A mutant gene is NOT the most common gene at a given location in the chomosomes in the wild population. Every mutant gene has a corresponding normal gene. The normal gene at one location is quite different from the normal gene at a different location.

The normal gene is used as the standard of comparison to determine whether a mutant gene is dominant, codominant or recessive. If the mutant gene is dominant to the normal gene, then the normal gene is recessive to the mutant gene. If the mutant gene is codominant to the normal gene, then the normal gene is codominant to the mutant gene. If the mutant gene is recessive to the normal gene, then the normal gene is dominant to the mutant gene. It's just easier to write that the mutant gene is dominant/codominant/recessive to the normal gene and skip the reverse version.

It takes all the normal genes to make a normal-looking snake (one that looks like most of the snakes crawling around in the wild). A morph somehow looks different from a normal snake. Changing one gene from a normal gene to a mutant gene is enough to produce a morph.

Questions are always welcome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

That's okay, I'll just come up with more questions lol.



If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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The calculator assumes that a banana ball python has a banana gene paired with a normal gene. When paired with a normal (2 normal genes) all the babies get a normal gene from the normal parent. Half the babies get a normal gene from the banana parent and are normal snakes. The other half of the babies get a banana gene from the banana parent and are banana ball pythons -- visual hets.

I do not know what a snake with two banana genes looks like. It may have been done, and I just never heard of it. But, as far as I know, the huge majority of existing banana ball pythons are visual hets.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Talley Reptiles

That's okay, I'll just come up with more questions lol.



If this is the case, how come when I run a normal and a banana ball through the calculator it says half will be bananas and half normal. With what you said, shouldn't some be a visual mix of both?

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banana is the visual mix of both, full expression of banana looks like this (aka super banana): http://www.reptileradio.net/ball-pyt...er-banana.html

Thank you all for the reply! I can happily say I understand this ALOT better than I did before- So thank you! I can't wait till later this year to buy a morph and start in on all the fun!