Hidden Gene

Okay, I’ve read a few threads on this subject, and I’m still a little lost about what a hidden gene is.

But here is what it seems like: A hidden gene is a different allele that rest of the same locus, but has no effect on the appearance of the snake until mixed with a certain mutation? So there is no visual way of telling if a snake has a hidden gene or not, until mixed with whatever morph “releases” the hidden gene’s appearance?

Anyone?

Yeah I think so, it's kinda like it's het for the hidden gene. Animal looks normal until the right thing is added then bang! Carrot cake comes out of the oven instead of German chocolate cake etc weird and wild things. :rolleye2:

While your description is possible I don't think it's the only possibility. I don't think it has been proven that the hidden gene has the same locus as the allele causing the mutation. It seems plausible that the hidden gene allele has a different locus but has no phenotype unless it exists in conjunction with another allele at a different locus. The combination of the two different alleles, each with a different locus could have a synergistic effect.

For example, we expect the super woma to be a pearl but that hasn't been happening. NERD appears to have womas that can make pearls and that ability is attributed to a hidden gene combined with the woma gene. Is it a super woma (the same allele existing on both chromosomes at the same locus) PLUS a different allele at a different locus or is it the combination of the woma allele and the hidden gene at the same locus (one on each chromosome)? I don't know. I don't know if anyone really knows. It's a very cool question and I'll bet most of us wish we had paid a lot closer attention when we took genetics in high school/college. How does the expression go? '...if I knew then what I know now..."

Regards,

Early on I also thought that the hidden gene in the platy line might be a recessive gene at a different locus than lesser. However, a couple things that made me change my mind:

1. Normal looking platy offspring X normal looking platy offspring produced only normal looking animals.
2. Lesser X lesser never produced reported platy (even lessers right out of the platy).
3. Butter platy was produced without inbreeding, just by crossing butter with a normal looking platy offspring like was crossed with lesser to produce more platy.

At this point it sure looks like the platy hidden gene is yet another allele of the same gene as the lesser mutation. It just happens to be an odd one in that it looks normal even when homozygous. Also, it's combo with lesser (i.e. platy) isn't completely white but it wouldn't be the first non completely white combo in this complex (homozygous phantom, homozygous mojave, crystal).

Great! From the result of butter platy breeding, at least, the hidden gene should have a dominant effect to lesser/butter.

Still, there are two possibilities that the hidden gene is allelic to lesser/butter or that is a different locus. Both cases can explain recent breeding results of platties.

However, when the original Platty Daddy was crossed to normal females, platties were never produced because the hidden gene is allelic to lesser gene and that cannot transmit to next generation with lesser!

Many alleles of Platinum complex including the hidden gene were isolated, suggesting that this gene may have fragile structure.

Or it could be that the hidden woma gene is total BS to hype up a morph with limited comercial appeal. Woma is a homozygous lethal gene, anything else is BS marketing.

The hidden "platty" gene was easy to figure out as well. I came to that conclusion years ago and when I spelled it all out on a few forums I was ridiculed by Ralphs minions.

Same thing for the super stripe and crystal balls, they were both obviously situations with a second mutation on the same allele but everyone wanted to believe otherwise.

This stuff is not that complicated, in fact its extremely simple, some just seem to think that a good mystery is be better for selling snakes.



How many womas have been produced and sold? anyone else wonder why nobody else ever seems to have the "hidden gene"

I would love to see some evidence that a hidden woma gene exists.

Nick

Even more perplexing than the mysterious ingredients of the Soul Sucker, is that one of the great marketing strategies in ANY market has gone unnoticed!!!

I would argue that it matters less whether or not we know/think we know what any of Kevin's "clandestine gene combos" truly are. Mattering most is that we continue to revisit any number of Kevin's creations to ponder their ingredients!!!

Truth be told, most would agree there are more than a few morphs and combos equal to NERDS in visual beauty. I find no less than a dozen that I find MORE attractive/compelling to my eye.

However, it is the "cloak of mysterious ingredients" that Kevin's animals wear that DEMANDS our attention. As the saying goes, "Any pub is good pub -- just make sure you spell the name right."

A valuable lesson learned for this beginning breeder -- BIG TIME!!! Withheld ingredients = high project interest!!! The Evil Morph God is without question a breeding visionary. Moreover, I would humbly submit that he sits alone atop Mount Olympus when it comes to project marketing and management...:bow::bow::bow:


__________________
Bill Buchman

I think the hidden gene is not completely understood yet and the simple fact that the possibility of two strands currently existing even makes things less understood. Just like with the genetic banded/tiger morph, so many different lines exist and just becouse one line breeds with this morph and makes a ball python that looks like X doesn't mean the results will be the same with each line. This is the excitement that keeps the ball python world on its toes so to speak.

Additionally as we see more and more multi gene animals does anyone think somewhere along the line a mix match of these genes could cause a new individual morph when someone tries seperating the genes back to their origional individual mutations? The alleles could combine with one another on some level eventually that would not allow them to be individually seperated at some point.

While a lot of people exist that breed ball pythons and understand the basics of genetics when it comes to basic breeding principles, but no extensive gene mapping has been carried out to understand the long term affects of the various combinations over time. Also with multiple generations being held in captivity and selective breeding and such will changes occur to the ball python in time (long after I'm dead) that allow it to be classified as domesticated? A higher level of intelligence than they currently have?

Then you throw in the hybrid formulas that a lot of people frown on and you realize we have not yet begun to scratch the surface. What would happen if you bred a T+ Albino ball python to a T+ blood python? What would happen if you could carry the gene of a mojave ball over to a borneo short tail? Many mysteries exist currently. Some of the most brilliant minds in history were called crazy and excentric in their times and shunned by the scientific communities they themselves ended up creating new levels of understanding for.

I was only talking about RDR's Platy hidden gene. I agree that NERD's secrets probably do get his morphs talked about more but for me it has had the opposite effect. With no hope of ever figuring them out I tend to forget them and concentrate on projects like RDR's platy where he has posted years of breeding results. I suppose the only reactions that really mater are the people who'll buy and both hidden gene projects are still well out of my price range. I don't know anything about NERD's hidden gene project and any time I read “hidden" I automatically think of RDR's and I assume the two are completely unrelated.

With the blue eyed leucistic complex, the yb/spector complex, the black pastel/cinnamon complex, and perhaps a fire/sulfur complex we need to all get up to speed on the concept of multiple mutant alleles (different mutations of the same gene). It does break the rules we first learned with combos of different mutations of different genes (like snow or pewter) but isn't so tough once you get your head around it. The main thing to remember is that any one snake can never have more than two copies of the same gene (one from mom and one from dad) no mater how many different versions total are know in captive populations. Also that one parent can only give each offspring one copy of the same gene (why a lesser\\mojave bel can't produce more bel's bred to a normal).

Now if we eventually do run into linked mutations (different mutations of different genes that just happen to be close together on the same chromosome) then we can get into a whole new level of complexity with crossovers. I think this is the scenario that Gloryhound was talking about. For example, if it turned out that one of the axanthic lines and hypomelanistic where mutations of genes that where close together on the same chromosome it would take a rare (like 1:16 wasn't enough odds) crossover between those two mutations to make the first true ghost with that line (actually it would take two such crossovers or the same crossovered chromosome copied into the same snake with inbreeding). However, once that crossover happened until another crossover undoes it that true ghost’s descendents would reproduce at 1:4 when breeding double hets together.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nick Mutton

The hidden "platty" gene was easy to figure out as well. I came to that conclusion years ago and when I spelled it all out on a few forums I was ridiculed by Ralphs minions.

---

Can you post a link to your explanation?

The hidden platty gene is simply another allele I the blue eyed lucy complex. Think of platty daddy as a kind of super form, although derived from two different types of hets.

All of the combos that are derived from seperate mutatant alleles of the same gene are erasy to spot, simpy put they are always "more than the sum of their parts"

A specter doesent look like anything and a yellowbelly isnt much better but the superstripe is extreme, more than the sum of its parts.

The reason for this is that the superstripe/platty/crystal all lack any normal copies of one of their genes, instead they have two different mutant copies. Those combos end up as a sort of visual "freak out".


Another concept that people need to get their head around is that a mutant gene need not manifest itself visually. Hence the possiblity that mutatant allele to the blue eyed lucy group for instance could be invisible , at least untill its paired with another mutant allele resulting in a visual manifestation, such as the original platty.

Nick

Randy, we do already have a few linked genes. Both spiders and pieds are linked to the white snake group.

Its why spider pieds are all white exept the head and why mojave/lesser/vin pieds are not what we would expect visually.

In the case of spiders, Its a lethal gene, any other explanation is total BS. Lethal genes are bad for business so they just claim "there is no super" wich is of course nonsense as we both know that from a genetic standpoint it has to exist. The answer is that its lethal and they die early in incubation.

If a super spider could make to to hatching I would be the proverbial farm it would be a white snake.

Ponder this , Spider balls appear to the the EXACT SAME mutation as the jaguar carpet python morph. Both are co-dom reduced pattern mutation, both have the exact same nuero problems and both are lethal genes. Thats whole lot of cooincidences.

In carpets the supers can make it all the way to hatching and then die in the egg, lack of lung developement the likely cause. Its 100% lethal with no hope of fixing it.

And the super jag carpets are luecistic, just as the super spiders would be almost certainly.

And then there is the woma balls (worst morph name in history) another co-dom, reduced pattern gene with a lethal white super, also with nuero problems, this is not a cooncidence.
Nick

I did get burned once on the assumption that a combo that was more than its parts would indicate that the two mutations where alleles of the same gene. When the pewter came out so wild looking I thought it was very likely the first example of a multiple mutant allele combo. When Graziani was first making a case that cinnamon would be genetic he even compared it to pastel. So I was pretty surprised when the pewters where bred and proved that cinnamon and pastel weren’t even closely linked.

Perhaps there is some chemical process relationship between the two mutations that explains why pewter is so out there. Maybe some similar relationship exists with pied and spider and also pied and lesser. However since the homozygous pied + het spider and the homozygous pied + het lesser where produced so quickly I also don't think these are examples of the sort of linking I was thinking of where two mutations just happen to have loci that are very near each other on the same chromosome. If we do eventually run into that sort of linking in ball pythons it will be hard to prove. Watch for combos that are taking way too long to make as possible evidence.

The first time I saw the suggestion that the hidden platy gene might be an allele of lesser was a post by someone from Taiwan with the user name hahaman on the spiderballs forum which disappeared some years ago. I found some references to it in 2005 posts on this forum (very entertaining reading) but I can't say for sure what year hahaman’s post was; perhaps as far back as 2003. The idea has only really started to catch on in the last year or so.

To me the lesser allele was obvious as it was the only way to expalin all the early breeding results. Its a diagnosis by exclusion.

I think all too often people theories are based on what they would like something to be as opposed to what the evidence suggests.

Its like the "paradigm" boa I spent a while talking to Mike on the phone about it not long after he first prodcued them. He was convinced that he could make an animal that was homozygous for one form of albino and heterozygous for the other. The concept that the T+ and the sharp strain T- were alleles eluded him. The result is years spent chasing something thats impossible.

Nick

This is an awesome thread guys, thank you! I just went from a laymans understanding of how morph genetics work with BPs to a much higher level of understanding.
Nick I am totally with you on the spider being a lethal homozygenous gene. The 'wobble' that so many spiders have is so indicative of an underlying neuro-genetic issue. No matter what our 'hopes' are its not likely that a super will survive unless we can somehow change the gene. Unfortuneately I'm not a genetic surgeon or I'd be right on that project.
I think it would be interesting to research clutch mortality rates in spider x spider breedings vs spider x normal.

Thanks again everyone for the great info on this thread! IMO this should be genetics sticky!

Albie