Question on Genetics

[Katie]

Alright, question for all you genetically knowledgeable people in here.

Breed bloodred x normal and get a normal showing some bloodred traits (or het for bloodred or 50% bloodred, however you want to say it. I've heard it expressed all 3 of those ways!).

Now take that normal /w bloodred traits and breed to a normal het for amel.

You get all normals with some het for amel right? Or am I wrong?

I argued about this for half an hour yesterday with a friend and now am really curious to find the answer. He says you'd get some amels and I say no amels, just normals & some het for amel.

Can you guys help?

 

[Hurley]

Breed bloodred x normal and get a normal "het for blood" which may or may not show some blood tendencies.

Breed this normal "het for blood" to a normal het amel and you get all normals, 50% of which would be het for amel. If you treat blood as a het then you could say you'd get:

25% Normals
25% Normals het amel
25% Normals het blood
25% Normals het amel and blood

<i>Unless, of course, either your blood or normals were carrying amel, then you had a chance for your Normal het blood to carry amel as well. If your normal het blood is het amel as well, by crossing it on a normal het amel you'd expect:

25% amels and 75% normals

amels would have a 50% chance of being het blood
normals would be 67% chance het amel, 50% het blood</i>

 

[Katie]

So assuming that the het for blood is ONLY het for that and nothing else, I get normals with some het for amel. Great, that means I win the arguement! Lol.
I'm fairly certain that my het for blood doesn't have any other hets that I'm unaware of. The normal mom was WC and the bloodred dad must have been decendant from the Love's line (or the guy they got their line from) at one point. I'm not 100% certain where it came from exactly or how it got to NB (even amels are unheard of here, let alone bloodreds!) but now I'm intrigued enough to ask they guy who had it.

So you said :

If you treat blood as a het then you could say you'd get:
25% Normals
25% Normals het amel
25% Normals het blood
25% Normals het amel and blood

So does this mean that, though bloodred may not be a trait like amel or anery, it can be passed on in much the same way? So then het for blood X blood would give 50% bloods and 50% normals?? And can this "het for blood" be passed to a certain % of babies when bred to something like a normal? If so, why ISN'T it a trait like amel or anery? If the above isn't true, why is it sometimes called a het? Lack of a better explaination?

It's stuff like this about corn genetics that really confuses me! Lol.

Oh, and how is a bloodred not an amel (my friend's arguement was that a bloodred essentially IS amel b/c it has no black)?

Thanks for the patience with my really long post!

 

[Darin Chappell]

Bloodred, according to the best estimates of those "in the know" appears not to be a simple recessive trait like amel. Instead, it appears to be a composite of several simple recessive traits. So, when you breed a bloodred to a normal, all of the babies will be het for all of the composite recessive traits. However, putting those traits back together in the subsequent generations is more difficult because there are more traits involved than the single one that controls amelanism. So, yes a bloodred X normal crossing gives you animals that are "het" for bloodred, but that does not mean that you can expect the same percentages of offspring colorations when you breed that het to another het or to a bloodred.

Bloodreds are different from amels in this way. Amels are animals that produce no melanin (black pigment), but bloodreds do produce it, yet exhibit it in a greatly reduced fashion. Many bloodreds have the faint outlines of black around their saddles, and bloodreds have the dark eyes that amels lack. There are amel bloodreds which have the best of both worlds, but those are a different morph than either amel OR bloodred, resulting from a combination of the two.

You might cruise around on www.serpenco.com and www.cornsnake.net to see the differences for yourself. Then show your friend . . .and gloat!

Hope this helps -- Darin

 

[Katie]

Yes that does help clear things up a bit. The waters around bloodreds are still pretty muddy to EVERYONE it seems, not just me. So no one really knows for 100% sure just WHAT it is? That almost seems like something worth investigating...

Oh, and yes I will gloat and I don't care what I get from that pairing, I'm still getting the normals het amel from Simon if I can (with a little luck and a lot of sucking up to the bf).

 

[Serpwidgets]

Oh, and yes I will gloat and I don't care what I get from that pairing, I'm still getting the normals het amel from Simon if I can (with a little luck and a lot of sucking up to the bf).

You have to suck up to get more snakes? Sounds like you need a different bf.

 

[Katie]

Yes, I do a lot of sucking up when I want a new snake. Lol. And if that fails I argue!

Since I only technically have one snake (more on the way) and I just got her this spring, he thinks it's ridiculous to need 3 more right now. Lol. He sees snakes like dogs or cats: one or two are enough. I see snakes like great pets, very interesting breeding projects and the fun of having baby snakes in a few years.

He still has no idea I plan on breeding any of my snakes... Lol.

Good thing I always get my way! Last night he agreed on getting some hatchlings from Simon on top of the one that is already spoken for at my breeders (they hatched last week! so cute) So I should have at least 4 or maybe 5 snakes by the end of the summer.