Pastel Morph questions

If a Pastel is bred to a normal snake and some of the off spring do not show the coloration of the Pastel, are they then considered a Het even though the Pastel is a dominant gene? Could the non-Pastel colored snakes carry the gene and possibly have Pastel off spirng?

Thanks

Yes.

yes and all the normal offspring would be 100%hets

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sk8er4life

yes and all the normal offspring would be 100%hets

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NO. The normal offspring are exactly that - 100% NORMAL. Not het for pastel, not het for ANYTHING They are normal snakes with no recessive genes that would eventually throw offspring that appear different from the normal form.

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/genetics_codom.html

There are the punnet squares for co-dominant genes, using pastel as an example, as generally referred to within herpetocultural circles.

Randy Remington can (and probably will) come on & explain how "co-dominant" is actually a misused term in herpetoculture (yes, I agree, and that's a whole 'nother shootin' match), but for all intents & purposes, we'll stick with terminology that is widely used at the moment, at least until it's understood.

Normals from a Pastel clutch are normals. Not hets. Just, wild-type ball pythons.

Hope this helps!!!!

K

KLG is right... Pastels are het for Super Pastel.

haha K beat me to the punch
as always


but she probably said it better than i could
and without really trying to confuse you

The pastels are comparable to the "hets" of other traits, they only carry 1 gene of the trait...but show certain differences between themselves and normals(aka, look pastel). Then when two of the recessive genes you get the Homo. form.

Technically speaking a Super Pastel is the Homo. form of the trait(kind of comparable to an ALBINO's homo, for all intents and purposes - Thus by that analogy....pastels are pretty much the same as a 100% het albino, technically speaking). I am aware there are other genetic differences i should probably mention, but i was just trying to explain it with a simple analogy with out getting to complicated.

but like everyone else said
Pastel siblings are normals, no recessive traits, just normal. (Unless of course the pastel was bred to something else, and the "normal-looking" snakes could possibly het for another trait)

Definitely NO. Pastel (or Super Pastel) is a codominant (or incomplete dominant) gene. Pastels themselves are hets, therefore there are no such things as normals that are het for the pastel gene. You only have normal looking hets for recessive genes.

With that said, normal offspring from Pastel x Normal pairings tend to have brighter colouring than normal. However, they are just nice normal and can NOT produce pastel offspring.

Just a litte more info on genetics.

Phenotype - The observable physical and/or biochemical characteristics of the expression of a gene; the clinical presentation of an individual with a particular genotype

Genotype - The genetic constitution of an organism or cell; also refers to the specific set of alleles inherited at a locus

So basically, phenotype is the appearance and genotype is the genetics. Phenotype is the morph itself (normal, albino, pastel, etc...). Genotype is either heterozygous or homozygous for a certain gene. When looking at a combination of a given morph gene, you have homozygous normal genotype, heterozygous normal + morph genotype, and homozygous morph genotype.

For recessive genes (such as albino and pied), both the homozygous normal genotype and heterogyzous normal + morph genotype have the normal phenotype, whereas only the homozygous morph genotype is the morph phenotype.

For codominant and incomplete dominant genes (such as pastel), the homozygous normal genotype has a normal phenotype, the heterozygous normal + morph genotype is the regular morph phenotype, and the homozygous morph genotype is the super morph phenotype.

For dominant genes (such as spider, as far as we know), the homozygous normal genotype has a normal phenotype, and both the heterozygous normal + morph genotype and the homozygous morph genotype are the morph phenotype. Therefore, there is no super morph phenotype.

Hope that clears a few things up.

Since I thought that might be a bit confusing, I decided to practice my html skills and made this table.

Code:

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<html>
<p>
<h3>Recessive</h3>
<table border="1">
<tr><th>Genotype</th><th>Allele 1</th><th>Allele 2</th><th>Phenotype</th></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td></tr>
<tr><td>Heterozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Morph</td><td>Normal</td></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Morph</td><td>Morph</td><td>Morph</td></tr>
</table><br><br><br>

<p>
<h3>Codominant (or incomplete dominant)</h3>
<table border="1">
<tr><th>Genotype</th><th>Allele 1</th><th>Allele 2</th><th>Phenotype</th></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td></tr>
<tr><td>Heterozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Morph</td><td>Regular Morph</td></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Morph</td><td>Morph</td><td>Super Morph</td></tr>
</table><br><br><br>

<p>
<h3>Dominant</h3>
<table border="1">
<tr><th>Genotype</th><th>Allele 1</th><th>Allele 2</th><th>Phenotype</th></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td><td>Normal</td></tr>
<tr><td>Heterozygous</td><td>Normal</td><td>Morph</td><td>Regular Morph</td></tr>
<tr><td>Homozygous</td><td>Morph</td><td>Morph</td><td>Regular Morph</td></tr>
</table>
</html>

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Hrrm... I can't seem to get it to come out as htm....

Nice try anyway. I'm gonna post that on a forum I admin and see if it turns out that way. I don't know how to make it work on these type of boards, lol.

Actually I've been staying out of the whole "co-dominant" vs. "incomplete dominant" discussion for the most part. I don't really understand the finer points of the difference and I'm not really sure we could tell just by looking anyway.

Every now and then you hear about particularly bright "normal" pastel siblings. I wonder if these aren't carriers of genes other than pastel that have been bred into some of the premium pastel lines over the years to enhance them. Basically I'm figuring that someone working on the ultimate pastel might pick particularly bright colored "normal" females and some of these might actually be genetically bright due to unnamed (but not pastel) genes. So some of the premium pastel lines might be combos of pastel + other bright genetics and sometimes those other genetics are seen stand alone in the siblings. Those non-pastel siblings still will never produce pastels on their own (i.e. without being bred to a pastel) but might be interesting genetically anyway.

what forum do you admin cody? I admin the site in my sig.

one thing that really surprises me is the amount of people who thick that you can get hets for everything. i seen one guy selling spider hets one time and he had people interested in them till he got slammed by someone who knew better. i just how that people that are looking to by any het and any morph do some reading on that morph before spending there cash and even check out the breeder if it not a visible morph. you hear about it all the time one one trying to get there dream morph by buying hets and then they buy them from unknown breeders to save money but find out later that they got ripped. go to nerds site they have a lot of info on genetics that is very helpful .

It's my understanding that for codominant genes, the heterozygous normal + morph phenotype should be completely different than the homozygous morph phenotype, whereas for incomplete dominant genes, the heterozygous normal + morph phenotype is an intermediate, blend, or lesser of the normal and homozygous morph phenotypes. In other words, morphs where the homozygous morph is a super of the heterozygous morph. Therefore, the pastel gene should technically be incomplete dominant.

I'm not sure if there are any true codominant genes in ball pythons right now, so I'll just come up with a fictional example. Let's say we have the Excodom morph. The heterozygous normal + morph phenotype is a red striped ball python and the homozygous morph phenotype is a blue polka-dot ball python. This would be a codominant gene since the heterozygous form and homozygous form are completely different.

However, as far as herps go, it probably isn't necessary to make the distinction between codominant and incomplete dominant and it makes sense to call them all the former rather than the latter as it's shorter to write or type.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gncz73

one thing that really surprises me is the amount of people who thick that you can get hets for everything. i seen one guy selling spider hets one time and he had people interested in them till he got slammed by someone who knew better. i just how that people that are looking to by any het and any morph do some reading on that morph before spending there cash and even check out the breeder if it not a visible morph. you hear about it all the time one one trying to get there dream morph by buying hets and then they buy them from unknown breeders to save money but find out later that they got ripped. go to nerds site they have a lot of info on genetics that is very helpful .

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Amen to that lol, a while back someone was claiming they bought a het for pastel for the price of a normal. :roll:

okay, i've always thought a pastels shed would be clear, no gray tints
of the snakes pattern. am i wrong?