Genetic testing?

[jason_ladouceur]

I was thinking about this the other day and was wondering if anyone knows if it’s been tried. I know genetic testing is used for identifying gender in parrots and some lizards, gilas for example. So I’m thinking, could it be used to identify animals that het for recessive mutations. Does anyone even know what they would be looking for, what allele, what the mutated DNA strain looks like, etc etc. And although the cost I would think would make it prohibitive for animals like het pieds and albinos. I would think that being able to tell hets from possible hets in more expensive animals like toffee’s and double recessive’s say albino het pied, may make the cost worthwhile.

[Krynn]

Using genetic testing to establish the gender of an animal is pretty easy, as sex chromosomes are distinguishable from the rest of an animals chromosomes.

Using genetic testing to identify hets would be rather costly, simply because (as far as i know) the genes responsible for specific color mutations are not identified. That means in order to find out if your animal was het you would first need to determine specifically what genes were responsible for producing whatever phenotype you were looking for. This alone would be quite costly im sure.

Maybe once ball pythons are sequenced, genetic testing might be viable though. Its quite amazing how technology in this feild is exploding (with DNA barcoding and whatnot) so maybe we will see this becoming viable within the next few decades

By the way i am no master of genetics or anything so if somebody sees something wrong with my reasoning feel free to point it out ;P.

-Dylan

[jason_ladouceur]

this my thoughts on the matter as well. I figured until we had at least a base line for an animal’s DNA sequence it would be impossible to distinguish the specific traits responsible for creating mutations.

[MissDizzyBee]

Definitely not possible right now, and I think it'll be a long time before it'd be more lucrative to use that over just breeding them out. Someone would have to go through the incredible expense and effort of sequencing the genes and then identifying each color gene individually just to get a baseline to test against...and that's assuming each color or pattern is matched to a specific color or pattern gene rather than being a by-product of other genetic conditions....

It sounds wonderful in theory but all the work and money just for a colored snakey is pretty pointless. X.X

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[kitedemon]

I have a very crude understanding of genetics but I *think* what you are speaking of would need a shotgun approach of large amounts of patter testing to find what you are looking for (then you need to interpret the results) Typically 4000-10000 tests but the issue is I believe a single test is about 4$ You are very quickly into a huge amount of cash. I have never heard of any research group on colour being done on royals.

[ChadH1971]

I have only gotten into Ball Pythons in the last year and I only have one "Normal" female. She is about a year old now and eventually I would like to breed her. Unfortunately, I did not buy her from a breeder, so I have no idea what her alleles might be. I won't know until I breed her. If I breed her to a homozygous normal male and none of the babies have any recessive traits, then I know that she too is homozygous normal. If she is heterozygous though, then I could get 50% heterzygous offspring. If she is heterozygous and I breed her to a heterozygous male, then I could get a recessive expression. The same would happen if she is heterozygous and I breed her to an albino, pied, or some other recessive trait male. If she is not heterozygous though and I breed her with a recessive trait male, then all of the babies will he heterozygous normal. That is a much simplified genetics discussion because color is often controlled by a third allele and the crosses become much more complex.

The human genome has been mapped completely, but I don't know what the state of the science is for other species. It is all very fascinating. I hope to one day be a very good breeder, but it all costs a lot of money.

[BCS]

Well, they do have tests to test what breed is in a mixed dog or cat. Being het is generally a part of a mutation in the DNA and actually it is quite easy to test DNA no-a-days. I am not sure though if it is super important to actually test for hets or mutations in snakes for it to actually be done. DNA tests for dogs and cats were "invented" for professional dog and cat shows. To test DNA all they need is a tiny bit of blood but a test for dog breeds and snake color mutation would be different.

[paulh]

The professionals have recently gotten the complete genome of the corn snake. I hope the ball python is next on their list of reptiles.

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-corn-sn...sequenced.html

[Blue Apple Herps]

The professionals have recently gotten the complete genome of the corn snake. I hope the ball python is next on their list of reptiles.

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-corn-sn...sequenced.html

That's pretty cool! With the cost of sequencing becoming increasingly cheaper, only a matter of time before anyone can have a genome sequenced for a reasonable amount of money. I imagine in the next 10 years there will be more genomes sequenced than not.

However, that being said, I struggle to see how this benefits the average hobbyist. Even if we did identify the exact gene for pied or bamboo or whatever, so what? I could have see it being worth it to identify those 66% hets or 50% hets as being 100% hets back when pieds were $10k through sequencing. But now, probably not much value to the average hobbyist.