Genetics Questions

[Skyespirit86]

1. Motley and stripe share the same locus, just like amel and ultra. Amel and ultra are codominant so you only need one parent to be an amel and one to be an ultra to get an ultramel. Is this the same with motley and stripe?

2. What notation do you use to symbolise a hybrid such as a creamsicle? As in a/a for an amel.

3. When you write down the symbols for a normal, you can just put ++, but why might you put _+_+? Does the underscore symbol indicate you are not talking about any particular locus?

4. Why is the symbol for bloodred/diffused a capital D? All the others are small letters indicating they are recessive, so is diffused dominant? If you don't use the second little d in superscript for whatever reason, which I have gathered from reading Charles Pritzel's book is an accepted method, then how do people know you're talking about the diffused gene, or the normal gene at that locus? For example instead of writing D+ for normal, and DD for the diffused gene some people don't bother with the second letter/symbol and just put a single letter, usually it is obvious whether you're talking of the wild type of the recessive mutant because of the case of the letter, but its not going to work if the symbol for this allele is a capital anyway.

[toyah]

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

1. Motley and stripe share the same locus, just like amel and ultra. Amel and ultra are codominant so you only need one parent to be an amel and one to be an ultra to get an ultramel. Is this the same with motley and stripe?

Motley is dominant over stripe, rather than codominant to stripe. So mating a motley to a stripe will give you all motleys het stripe.

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

2. What notation do you use to symbolise a hybrid such as a creamsicle? As in a/a for an amel.

There's no notation as there's no locus for a hybrid.

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

3. When you write down the symbols for a normal, you can just put ++, but why might you put _+_+? Does the underscore symbol indicate you are not talking about any particular locus?

No idea why anyone would do that ;-) Personally I don't tend to use ++ at all, as I find it just looks confusing!

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

4. Why is the symbol for bloodred/diffused a capital D? All the others are small letters indicating they are recessive, so is diffused dominant? If you don't use the second little d in superscript for whatever reason, which I have gathered from reading Charles Pritzel's book is an accepted method, then how do people know you're talking about the diffused gene, or the normal gene at that locus? For example instead of writing D+ for normal, and DD for the diffused gene some people don't bother with the second letter/symbol and just put a single letter, usually it is obvious whether you're talking of the wild type of the recessive mutant because of the case of the letter, but its not going to work if the symbol for this allele is a capital anyway.

Personally I wouldn't use a capital for bloodred, I think it makes more sense to use a small letter - but if you did, then you'd most likely in a logical system use a small letter for the wild type. The reason for it is that quite often bloodred presents "het markers", so it is accepted that it is "codominant" with wild-type.

Charles Pritzel's book is his own personal notation, and whether people choose to use it or not is up to them, I am sure anyone who wanted to could make up their own system, and I don't believe he's ever consulted or asked about the notation he uses. So it is "accepted" by Charles as he prints it in his book, but I don't think that makes it official

[Skyespirit86]

The motley stripe thing is confusing...So you can have one of each and even though the snake is not homo motley or homo stripe, they still make a pair since they're at the same place, and the snake doesn't resort to wild type like with other mutants which are recessive to wild type.

[Skyespirit86]

So what is a snake which is motley-stripe? Does it have 2 stripe genes and 2 motley genes?

And what is a het marker? Is it when a snake which is het for something shows signs of the gene? Does that mean caramels produce het markers? Because I've read they often make a snake more yellowy.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

1. Motley and stripe share the same locus, just like amel and ultra.

2 things -

Firstly, why are your snakes sharing food items?
Secondly, feeding rodents not insects would be better for them.

[Skyespirit86]

.....I get what your saying about the diffused notation. So logically speaking you're saying it should be d+ dd for a het blood, instead of D+DD? I thought that was right at first because it isn't seem to make sense to put a capital D+ if the wildtype isn't actually dominant, but now I'm not sure. But actually I think the capital letter is sort of right, since diffused is coDOMINANT to wildtype, and vice versa, they're not 'co-recessive'.

[Razzler79]

Originally Posted by Dan

2 things -

Firstly, why are your snakes sharing food items?
Secondly, feeding rodents not insects would be better for them.

[toyah]

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

The motley stripe thing is confusing...So you can have one of each and even though the snake is not homo motley or homo stripe, they still make a pair since they're at the same place, and the snake doesn't resort to wild type like with other mutants which are recessive to wild type.

Correct - if you think about it, there are three alleles here:
1: (the most dominant) - Normal - have a normal pattern
2: (the middle gene) - Motley - have a motley pattern
3: (the least dominant) - Stripe - have a stripe pattern

If the snake only has motley and stripe genes at that locus, then it hasn't been given the "instructions" on how to make a normal pattern, so it has to follow the motley instructions.

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

So what is a snake which is motley-stripe? Does it have 2 stripe genes and 2 motley genes?

A motley stripe is just a motley that's got an odd pattern. Any morph can have a huge amount of variation - for example, even normals can vary between Miami and Okeetee! So the variation within motley can give all the different Q-tip, striped, etc, patterns. It's nothing to do with the stripe allele.

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

And what is a het marker? Is it when a snake which is het for something shows signs of the gene? Does that mean caramels produce het markers? Because I've read they often make a snake more yellowy.

"Het marker" is often used to refer to snakes that carry (are het for) a recessive gene and show subtle signs of that when you look at them. Het bloodreds tend to have divided belly checkers, het caramels do tend to have more yellow, but that could well be a just to do with selective breeding as not all het caramels show that.

Originally Posted by Skyespirit86

.....I get what your saying about the diffused notation. So logically speaking you're saying it should be d+ dd for a het blood, instead of D+DD? I thought that was right at first because it isn't seem to make sense to put a capital D+ if the wildtype isn't actually dominant, but now I'm not sure. But actually I think the capital letter is sort of right, since diffused is coDOMINANT to wildtype, and vice versa, they're not 'co-recessive'.

Personally I would use Dd for a het blood, with D being the normal wild type, and d being the bloodred allele. But I am a big fan of simple notation - why use two letters and a + when one letter will do!