hypo masked?

[bmm]

I was just fooling around with the good ole Mick's corn program.

I matched up
1.1 Snow het Hypo

My results were
50% Snow het Hypo
25% Snow Hypo (masked)
25% Snow

What is this "masked" stuff all about? Can you tell a snow with some hypo genes apart from others? Is this what it means by "masked"

bmm

 

[carol]

Hypo is a gene that reduces black pigment. Since snow corns have no black pigment, the gene is masked. It still carries the gene that reduces black, but there is no black to be reduced. Some people will tell you there is no way to tell if a snow is hypo, but I don't agree. There are other things going on in hypo beside reduced black, but we haven't put that under our thumb yet so people just say it is masked. Most adult hypo snows are very pink in color, leading on that something else is happening.

 

[Jr Nimeskern]

When something is masked it means that it is dominant for that morph but since there is another morph that cancels out the genotype of that morph... example your Hypo Snow... The morph is Snow the Amel will take away all Black pigments... the Hypo will reduce the black pigments... since the Amel morph already deletes the black pigment the Hypo morph can not show on the genotype since there is no black to reduce... masked only means that its suppose to be present in the genotype but since some other morph is canceling it out it doesnt show...
hope I helped

 

[Serpwidgets]

When something is masked it means that it is dominant for that morph but since there is another morph that cancels out the genotype of that morph...

Egh, I've seen a lot of this lately. FYI "dominant" is a relationship between two particular alleles when they are paired with each other. For example, the normal counterpart to amel, the one which produces tyrosinase, is dominant to the amelanistic allele.

When a snake has two copies of the hypo allele, it is not "dominant for hypo" it is "homozygous for hypo."

 

[Kat]

Incidentally, from talking to Don S., snows that are also homozygous for hypo are indeed distinguishable from their siblings (once they're old enough) by their coral coloration. Coral snows are hypo snows.

 

[Rich Z]

Don and I have talked about this quite a bit.

I believe that many of those snows that are also homozygous for Hypo came from the Pastel Ghost lines, or other lines of Ghosts that tend to be more colorful than the normal variety. Many of the Pastel Ghosts are notorious for developing pink colored blotches. With that in mind, I would not be at all surprised that any snows coming from that particular line would also develop pink colored blotches.

My personal opinion is that Hypo (and which line of Hypo?) has nothing at all to do with that pinkish hue. And logically, why should it? Why then aren't Ambers (Hypo Caramels) pinkish colored? I have also had Butters hatch out of Amber parents and not seen the homozygous Hypo gene make a bit of difference.

Of course, the next question to pop into a reader's mind might be something along the line of "Well what makes that pinkish coloration in the Ghosts to start with?"

I guess it would be an interesting project for someone to explore this further.

 

[Kat]

I've really only seen that pinkish color in Anery A morphs that also have hypo in them... I've never seen it in any other form of anerythrism, so I'm wondering if the Anery A gene has some component to it? Either way, it's an interesting question.