Toffino genetics question

[Serpent_Nirvana]

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.

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) ...

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!

[PsychD_Student]

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?

[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?

[PsychD_Student]

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?

Bahaha 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.

[OhhWatALoser]

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.

[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?

[mainbutter]

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

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 - - -

So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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.

[mainbutter]

So candy and toffee have also been shown compatible?

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.

[OhhWatALoser]

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?

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

[majorleaguereptiles]

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?

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.