Genetics questions you were afraid to ask...

[Ant and Soph]

Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Genus is the wrong word there (a "genus" is, for example, "Pantherophis" - the subset of snakes to which corn snakes, black rat snakes and Texas ratsnakes belong, but not European or Asian ratsnakes). Locus is the "location"; "Genotype" might be the word you're looking for, as this is "the genetic traits expressed" while "phenotype" is the visual appearance for the animal.

But yes, you've got the sort of idea - most people tend to use A / a for the amel locus, but yes, A/a H/h is Normal-looking het Hypo Amel, and you'd need two pairs of the recessive traits to get a hypo amel.

Ah right, thanks mate you have helped me no end, I know I have a very long way to go but Iv finally got a basic grasp of how it works, Yeah think genotype was what I was looking for, however locus is easier to use. And will use A for amel in future, I imagine it would be but found a sight that seemed to use R for it, have a habit of finding out of date info.

Hate to say it but will probably have to pester you with a couple more silly questions in the future when I come have another read to get a more in depth view of how it all works

[manda88]

Doesn't matter, just worked out how to use the corn calculator!!

[lawrencet1988]

Does anyone know if a mystic potion spider has been produced?

[Snow_Man_UK]

Not many mystic potion combo's out there at the moment. As the more knowledgeable guys on here have not answered then I guess not.

I have a question regarding hypo compatability. As far as I know the main "orange" lines are pretty much proven to be compatible. Also the original green line. Known exception for cross compatibility are Graziani G1, Burgundy and Citrus. Since I will be adding more ghosts to my collection I will be happy to hear the views and further knowledge of our resident experts.

[Lisa morley]

I just wondered do all enigma leopards have the syndrome if not how can you tell when at a pet shop?

[Tadashii]

You might have already answered this somewhere in this thread; you touched on it at least, and I tried to read it all, but my brain started to overheat and threatened to explode...

I'm wondering about the three strains of albino in leos. I know the genes are different and are at different loci, so if your female is solely het for tremper albino and your male is solely het for rainwater you'll get neither. But is it possible for an animal to be heterozygous for two strains or even all three? And is it then possible for it to be homozygous for two strains or all three, even if it were impossible to tell by the appearance, or are these genes, while different, mutually exclusive?

For example, If you breed a tremper male to a rainwater female, presumably you'll have offspring that is 100% het for both, but if you then bred those offspring to each other, what would happen? In theory, both would have two genes of each strain at each locus. Would you get both traits showing their subtle differences, or would one take precedence over the other?

Your analogy of the car being stolen, no petrol, lost keys thing kind of made sense. Were you saying that one of these abnormalities would cause the albinoism and whichever one comes "first" is the trait that will be expressed? And if so, is there an order to it? Is it known which one does come first or is takes priority over the others?

Thanks

[Ssthisto]

Originally Posted by Lisa morley

I just wondered do all enigma leopards have the syndrome if not how can you tell when at a pet shop?

As I understand it, all Enigma leos have the *potential* to have, or develop, the wobbling, spinning behaviour - and an animal that doesn't show it now might someday START showing it. In a pet shop I'd be watching closely how the animal moved when handled, and when first exposed to bright light.

Originally Posted by Tadashii

I'm wondering about the three strains of albino in leos. I know the genes are different and are at different loci, so if your female is solely het for tremper albino and your male is solely het for rainwater you'll get neither. But is it possible for an animal to be heterozygous for two strains or even all three? And is it then possible for it to be homozygous for two strains or all three, even if it were impossible to tell by the appearance, or are these genes, while different, mutually exclusive?

Yes, it's possible for a leo to be het for two or more strains of albino. And yes, it's ALSO possible for them to be homozygous ... what's more difficult is telling your double (or triple) homozygous from a single.

Your analogy of the car being stolen, no petrol, lost keys thing kind of made sense. Were you saying that one of these abnormalities would cause the albinoism and whichever one comes "first" is the trait that will be expressed? And if so, is there an order to it? Is it known which one does come first or is takes priority over the others?

Ok, another analogy that might explain it better is PaulH's "assembly line" one.

Imagine that a leopard gecko is put together by an assembly line, like a car. Now, it goes through each pair of machines one by one, in a specific order (this is embryonic development!). The mutations actually "break" those machines so that they either don't work at all, work but only partway, or do something totally different to what they're meant to.

So your not-a-leopard-gecko-yet is coming up to the machines that make black pigment and tell it where to go on the gecko. Now, imagine the car assembly line here. One machine might be putting the doors on the car body, and one machine might be putting the door handles on the doors, and one machine might be putting the paint on the surface of the car including the doors. If the doors aren't on the car because the door-putting-on machines are broken, it doesn't matter if the door-handle machine is broken ALSO, because the doors aren't there for the handles to go onto. So the door handles won't be in the right place if they appear at all.

It's similar for the albino strains - one of the machines will "break" the process earlier in the chain than the other two, and one of the other two will break the process earlier than the last one. No, I don't know which one breaks the chain first - but whichever one breaks that chain first is likely to have the *most* effect on the visual appearance of the gecko.

But there may well be "telltales" that there are (or aren't) other genes at work. You might find the door handles on the floor of your car with no doors, if the door-handle machine ISN'T broken. You might find paint sprayed on the inside of the car because the body-paint machine isn't broken. You might find that you get a Tremper-coloured gecko with Bell patterning, and can make an educated guess about what it is genetically, which would then need to be tested by breeding.

It's pretty difficult to tell which of the strains breaks the melanin production and deposition process first, but I wouldn't be surprised if Bell is the one that breaks it LAST, based on how dark they can be (with the idea that more of the melanin-precursor chemicals are available to show in the skin).

[paulh]

Ssthisto, thanks for using the assembly line analogy. It makes this addition easier.

One good thing about the assembly line analogy is that it is fairly obvious that EVERY machine in the line is required to make a normal car -- one that looks like you expect. If all the machines except one is working right, the car does not look like you expect. If one machine is set up away from the assembly line, that machine doesn't make a car at all.

It also takes ALL the genes working as expected to make a normal creature. If all the genes except one are working right, the creature does not look like you expect. FOR SIMPLICITY, geneticists ignore all the genes that are working as expected. Just like a mechanic ignores the battery on a car with a flat tire. But those genes are still there. The genetics texts seem to assume that each gene works in a vacuum, which is not true. That is a holdover from the days when we knew less than we know now. We do not know (yet) how many genes are needed to make a leopard gecko, but its pretty safe to assume many thousands.

[Tadashii]

Thanks to both of you clever people for putting all of this in layman's terms, or as close to as possible. Feel like I'm getting to grips with it all now, though it is making me want to do some frankenstein experiments...

[yoyocrazy]

im trying to decide on which gecko to get
1st is a super giant female bandit albino 6months old and she is 84 grams also she is 50 percent het tpa
2nd is a male and is also a bandit albino he is 8 months old and is 104 grams both of these are moses grandson or grandaughter ijust wana who how big both would probaly be and male or female / which gets bigger
just reply or private message me please and thanks