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Designer snake mutations?
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by earthguy on February 28, 2006
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Good morning ladies and gentlemen,
I am very familiar with genetic variation, so broad answers dealing with “variations within populations” need not be posted here. What I am about to ask has more to deal with a specific observation:
Yesterday a friend of mine (a fellow biology teacher) asked me to sex his corn snake. He knows that I have a female, and he thought that if he had a male we could mate them. What a phenomenal biology lesson that would be for my students (students: “WHAT THE HECK IS THAT THING” me: “Oh, that’s just his hemi-penis”). But when I went to sex the snake I notices two things:
1. This was a “designer” corn snake (I think this variety is called “crimson”)
2. The head of this snake was far more blunt than that of any Pantherophis (Elaphe) that I have ever seen. This is where the “genetic diversity” part comes in. I’ve never seen a designer ratsnake before. I always deal with the wild-type. So is this a breeding flaw? I know that Labradors (the dogs) have been inbred to the point that joint problems (especially hip joints) run rampant throughout the population. Are ratsnakes headed in the same direction? Are they deGENEerating? I know that it may be just one breeder, but I was wondering if anyone else has made similar observations.
BTW, his snake is a male. I am entertaining the idea of trying to breed them, but I don’t want to purposely propagate a defect that has resulted from inbreeding. Thanks ya’ll
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RE: Designer snake mutations?
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by Cro on February 28, 2006
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Joshua: If you breed your normal corn snake to the mutant crimson corn snake, you would probably not propagate the defect, as you are breeding ``away`` from the mutation by re-introducing non-mutant dominant genetic traits for normal body shape and color.
The offspring would carry the mutant gene, but it is most likely they would express the dominant genetic traits of the normal snake.
They should be more healthy than if you had bred a mutant female back to the mutant male, as that way you would be breeding ``toward`` the mutation, and far more likely to keep the defect going in the offspring by combining recessive traits with other recessive traits.
From seeing all the tiny, sickly, mutant designer corn snakes, and king snakes, at the Greeneville show last fall, it is apparent that that type of inbreeding is indeed causing weak, and small sized snakes. There will be a much greater chance of flaws like what you mention happning in the many dogs with hip displacia, if these designer folks keep breeding mutants back to mutants.
So, go ahead and breed some strong genes back to that mutant snake. It should, if anything, produce offspring with better genetic traits than that of the mutant designer father.
JohnZ
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