Quote Originally Posted by gsarchie View Post
I would urge anyone who is looking at this as a snake with an "empty slot" to stop doing so, it will make it easier to understand the possibilities with this girl. There is not an empty slot at the loci on one of this girls chromosomes, there is DNA there but for whatever reason it isn't functioning properly and expressing the pattern/color that it should be. As far as I can see this is happenening for one of two reasons, one being that the copy of the gene is non-functioning as a result of the gene itself being transformed and the other being that it is non-functioning because certain envirnmental factors during development blocked it's function.

If it is the former then this snake will pass on (on the BEL complex locus) functioning mojave genes and non-functioning normal genes, so when bred to a mojave it would produce 1/2 BELs and 1/2 Normals. The BELs would be 1/2 normal BELs and 1/2 BELs with one mojave gene and one non-functioning gene and the normals would be 1/2 normal and 1/2 with one each functioning and non-functioning normal genes. When bred to a normal she would produce 1/2 normals and 1/2 mojaves with all of the normals having a copy of the non-functioning gene.

The empty slot was brought up in a scenario where we would call it Hemizygous, we are all just theorizing right now, but my point was you could still get normals if that was the case if the "empty slot" could be passed in a Hemizygous case. We were just trying to find something similar else in the genetic world, I dont think whats going on would be considered Hemizygous, but it's the closest thing I've seen so far in the real genetic world. What I haven't looked into was if Hemizygous can be caused by other factors rather normal conditions.

also you would get mojaves in that mix also. there wouldn't be any normals without the non-functioning gene.

M N
M MM (Real BEL) MN (BEL looking)
m Mm (Mojave) mN (normal with null)