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Question About The Term 'Het'

Kiesha Nore

New member
In browsing this forum, as well as other sites and forums, I've come across the term 'het' quite often. It seems to have something to do with the colour patterns, (eg. I usually see something like amel. het lavender or something), but I don't know what the term refers to. Help?
 
Het is short for heterozygous.

Most of the color mutations like amel Or Lavender are simple recessive genes.

The snake receives one gene from each parent for a specific trait. If one gives an amel gene and the other gives a normal gene then the normal gene dominates the simple recessive amel gene and the snake appears normal but is het for amel.

That is the 'simplified' version. Serp has a great site for learning this stuff.

Homozygous means both genes for a trait match, het means they are different. And it does get more involved but this is a good way to start understanding.
 
Ah, so basically, if it is normal het. amel, it's colouring is normal but it carries the amel. gene and therefore can pass it on to offspring? Thank you for the clarification.
 
yes, but it will only pass the amel gene onto some of it's offspring and it will pass the normal gene onto the others. It will be about a 50/50 split.

Skye
 
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