a quick genetics lesson

[ABrose]

I was reading up on some corn snake genetics but almost everything I read did not talk at all about snow corn snake genetics. What I am interested in is:

1. what will be produced with the snow being one of the parents (and a different het parent)?

2. what will be produced with a green snow corn being one of the parents (and a different het parent)?

3. What produces a green snow corn?

If anyone has some personal experience to share or some good reference sites ... I'm all ears

[SnowSnake]

1&2: It depends what it's parents' were...
were they:
amel het anery?
anery het amel?
het anery and amel (also called double het for snow)?
snow?

3: I'm not sure... probably only a variation like we see people with slightly different tones of skin...

[ABrose]

I guess I'm looking for sites that people could recommend to explain things a lil better... but thanks for your reply

[SnowSnake]

Here's a good program for finding predictions from breeding:

http://www.marcelpoots.com/CornWiz/MPCornWiz.zip

Unzip it and run the program.

Here are some terms you might not understand:

Het (or Heterozygous): The animal carries that trait but you can not see it. If a corn is only het amel it will look normal but will carry the amel gene.

Homozygous: A trait that you can see. If an animal is homozygous amel (we simply call that animal an amel) the that animal will express that trait(no black, red eyes).

Sep.Traits vs. Combo: If you enter snow male and snow female the answer as Sep.Trait will be 100% Amel,AneryA. If you select Combo instead the answer will be 100% Snow. Amel,AneryA = Snow

Phenotype: Only the homozygous result will be shown.

Genotype: Homozygous and Heterozygous results will be shown.

Grid vs. Memo: I won't explain the grid... just use memo it's less complicated.

Enjoy :D

[vanderkm]

Also check out Tim Cranwell's site for a good intro to genetics - http://www.cranwill.com/ and go to his FAQ page - some great explainations.

A green snow, to the best of my knowledge is not a result of a single recessive gene, but occurs due to selective breeding for green tinge to the borders. You cannot readily predict the extent to which this trait will be carried or shown in future generations.

When a snow corn is one parent, all the offspring will at least carry the gene for amel (red albino) and the gene for anery A (lacking red pigment). Whether they show those genes or simply carry them will depend upon what the other parent is. There are many possibilities and it is often best to select the partner for a snwo corn based on what you want to produce in the future generations.

The quick version of breeding snows is - If a snow is bred to another snow, you will get all snows. If bred to an amel, you willl get all amel, het anery A. If bred to anery A, you will get all anery A, het amel. This is assuming that neither partner is het for the other gene. If the amel partner is het for anery A, you will get some snows as well as amels.

The forum on www.cornsnakes.com is also a great place to get further info on corn genetics. There are a number of real experts that frequent there - including Marcel mentioned above, and you can link to several other advanced genetic sites from there.

mary v.