# Two questions...



## Dr. Noob (Aug 1, 2007)

1) What is het?
2) what would i get if i bred a female normal (normal X amel) and a male classic motley (hypo ghost motley X hypo motley het anery/amel, according to the breeder, i have no clue what this means!)
Thanks


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## Corny-Dawny (Jun 10, 2007)

Hi,
A het is a colour the animal is carrying so if you have a normal het amel it means if you bred it to another that was het amel you will get some amel, if the two dont carry the same hets then you will get normals with hets.
Hope that helps.
Dawn


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## purejurrasic (Mar 18, 2006)

All life is based on DNA, dont ask what that stands for, its to long for me to think about tonight !

However, DNA can be thought of as a long list of genes.

A gene can be thought of as an instruction.

So DNA is a long list of instructions. These instructions are used to dictate not only colour, size etc but also species, how many legs, wings etc.

Now, to make it simple, each gene is made from two parts called allele which can be the same or indeed different.

In most cases, the two parts of each gene need to be the same in order for that gene to give a valid instruction. (there are exceptions, but at this level they just confuse matters)

So for example, take the gene that makes an animal albino. 

For the animal to show that its albino, it needs both the allele for the gene in the dna that relate to colour to be turned on for albino. When both are turned on for abino, the animal shows this outwardly, ie it looks albino. this is known as homozygous

However, if only one allele is turned on, then the animal will not show as albino outwardly, even though it does carry one albino allele. this is known as hetrozygous, or 'het' for short.

So, being het for something means it carries only one allele for that trait and will never show the trait nor produce offsring that show the trait unless bred with another animal that has one or two albino allele, ie is albino or is 'het' for albino

An easy way to see this in action is humans. (i may have the sexes the wrongway round but the theory is sound)

Males only produce x cromosomes, or Male sperm. Females produce Y and X, both male and female eggs. depending on which egg or sperm meet and ferterlise the egg, the egg will be male or female. The male is Homozygous for male, the female is hetrozgyous for male, since the male is XX and the female XY

As for the corn part, sorry, I have no idea on corns but sure someone will be along that does soon enough !


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## Tops (Apr 26, 2007)

Quickest way to understand it is a het is a hidden gene that produces something different whether colour, shape etc.

You need a male and a female to both be carrying the same hidden gene for it to come out. So its a bit like 2 blonde people having a ginger kid. Its unlucky but they must have both been carrying the ginger gene it was just hidden.


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## rachel132002 (Dec 4, 2006)

That makes your corns in simple terms:

Normal 100% Het Amel

and

Normal Motley Het Ghost and POSS HET Amel & Anery

So if the 2nd doesn't have the amel gene you'll get:

12.5% Het Snow, Hypo & Motley
12.5% Het Ghost & Motley
12.5% Het Snow & Motley
12.5% Het Anery & Motley
12.5% Het Hypo, Amel & Motley
12.5% Het Hypo & Motley
12.5% Het Amel & Motley
12.5% Het Motley

Basically meaning ALL NORMAL HET MOTLEY & Possibly het for hypo, snow, ghost, anery, amel

2nd scenario is if BOTH do parents do carry the amel gene then you get:

25% Het Amel, Hypo & Motley
25% Het Amel & Motley
12.5% Amel Het Hypo & Motley
12.5% Het Hypo & Motley
12.5% Amel Het Motley
12.5% Het Motley

Simply:

Normal Het Mot & POSS HET Amel & Hypo
Amel Het Motley & Poss het hypo

If the 2nd parent was lucky enough to get both the anery & amel genes then you get *headache time*

12.5% Het Snow, Hypo & Motley
12.5% Het Snow & Motley
12.5% Het Amel Hypo & Motley
12.5% Het Amel & Motley
6.25% Amel Het Ghost & Motley
6.25% Het Ghost & Motley
6.25% Amel Het Anery & Motley
6.25% Het Anery & Motley
6.25% Amel Het Hypo & Motley
6.25% Het Hypo & Motley
6.25% Amel Het Motley
6.25% Het Motley

Normal het motley poss het hypo, snow, anery, amel & ghost
Amel het motley poss het anery, ghost, hypo

Bear in mind that ghost is a snake showing hypo & anery and a snow shows both anery & amel.

You really got that answered there lol, if it's wrong then bleh someone else can go for it lol


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## purejurrasic (Mar 18, 2006)

hehe, bet he didnt expect such detailed long replies to two short questions !!


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## Dr. Noob (Aug 1, 2007)

:lol2:, yer. So, if understood correctly, het is just when a snake carries a resesive characteristic?
BTW, I looked up DNA on wikipedia and it stands for *Deoxyribonucleic acid.
*


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## Ssthisto (Aug 31, 2006)

Dr. Noob said:


> :lol2:, yer. So, if understood correctly, het is just when a snake carries a resesive characteristic?


No.

"Het" (short for "heterozygous") means "The two genes of the pair are different."

That is ALL it means. It doesn't have anything to do with recessive or dominant or codominant or selectively bred traits - it JUST tells you that the two copies of the pair are different.

Now, in general usage, if an animal is described as "het for _something_" instead of "_something_" it means that the animal doesn't LOOK "_something_" but carries a single copy of the code to produce "_something_" offspring. The problem is when you start talking about dominant traits - you can be het for one of those, too, and it means that only HALF of your offspring will show the trait.



> what would i get if i bred a female normal (normal X amel) and a male classic motley (hypo ghost motley X hypo motley het anery/amel, according to the breeder, i have no clue what this means!)


Your classic motley cannot be a classic motley if the breeder is telling the truth that the parents were a Ghost Motley X Hypo Motley - both of these animals are visually Hypo (Ghost is Hypo + Anery) and cannot produce non-hypo offspring. Now, what's PROBABLY correct is that the snake's parents are:

Ghost Motley X Motley het Anery/Amel. 

Motley has a sort of hypo-like effect - it naturally reduces the black on an animal when it changes the pattern.

Which would make your male classic motley a Classic Motley het Hypo, Anery.

Your normal is het Amel since it had an Amel parent.

Which means any offspring are going to be normals het motley for sure - and POSSIBLY het Hypo, Anery or Amel.

Anything other than normal offspring means that your male and female are both carrying hidden *het* genes 

Oh, and Purejurassic:

Male mammals are *XY*. Female mammals are *XX*. The Y chromosome is the reason you can get sex-linked colours like Ginger tabbies - it's "missing" a leg of code. It's also why human males are more prone to colourblindness - for a woman, you have to get the gene on BOTH X chromosomes to get it, but on a man, the gene exists on the "leg" that is missing in a Y... so you only need one copy on the X in order to be unable to tell the difference between red and green


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## Faith (May 17, 2007)

Correct DNA is Deoxyribonucleic Acid 
which means 
Deoxy= No oxygen
Ribon= Sugar
Nucleic = In the nucleus of the cell
Acid= Acid

Sorry doing biology and chemistry at college thought you all might like to know a useless fact lol


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## purejurrasic (Mar 18, 2006)

Faith said:


> Correct DNA is Deoxyribonucleic Acid
> which means
> Deoxy= No oxygen
> Ribon= Sugar
> ...


ooooo, such a clever girl !!

:lol2:


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## paulh (Sep 19, 2007)

Ssthisto said:


> "Het" (short for "heterozygous") means "The two genes of the pair are different."
> 
> That is ALL it means. It doesn't have anything to do with recessive or dominant or codominant or selectively bred traits - it JUST tells you that the two copies of the pair are different.


This is 100% correct.

There are many thousands of gene pairs. Each gene pair is heterozygous (the two members of the pair are different) or homozygous (the two members of the pair are the same). But most of the time we can ignore all but one or a few gene pairs.

By the way, an allele is not a part of a gene. Alleles are different versions of a single gene. You might think of genes as sentences in a book. Alleles are different versions of one sentence. The wild type or normal allele is the sentence the way it usually appears. A mutant allele is the same sentence with a typographical error. A single sentence can have one typographical error in one edition of a book and a different typographical error in another edition of the book. In the same way, a gene survey of an animal population could find the normal allele and one, two, or more mutant alleles of a single gene.


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