# what's the difference between albinism and amelanism?



## kirsten

i'm thinking about corns whils asking this questionm it's a bone question i know, is there visual difference? as both are without melanin, or is it purely genetics? different alleals etc?


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## gazz

A true Albino is Pink skin with red eyes.Fur,Hair,scales,feathers will white on a true Albino.

Amel is lack of Blacks & Browns only.


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## kirsten

gazz said:


> A true Albino is Pink skin with red eyes.Fur,Hair,scales,feathers will white on a true Albino.
> 
> Amel is lack of Blacks & Browns only.


 
so pretty similar, but worlds apart at the same time, fair enough. I was looking at an amel corn pic and jsut thought that with red eyes, not melanin etc. was there much difference.


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## gazz

kirsten said:


> so pretty similar, but worlds apart at the same time, fair enough. I was looking at an amel corn pic and jsut thought that with red eyes, not melanin etc. was there much difference.


Well you know what a Amel red rat snake looks like.

A True Albino red rat snake would Would be clean white,no hint of patterning,Red eyes.A Albino red rat snake would look very muck like a Blizzard red rat snake.But a Albino red rat snake would be a single gene trait.When Blizzard red rat snake are a combo morph of Amel + Charcoal.

Example.

Blizzard X Normal = 100%Normal HET Amel,Charcoal.
========
Albino X Normal = 100%Normal HET Albino.


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## Ssthisto

"Albino" is an imprecise term. It's come to mean "red eyed white" because it was originally used to describe mammals missing pigmentation, and mammals only have one skin pigment (melanin).

Albino mammals are amelanistic.
Amelanistic reptiles are quite reasonably called "albino".
So are anerythristic reptiles, who are missing a different pigment.


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## gazz

Amel.










This is a Blizzard but to the eye a Albino would look pretty much like this.


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## paulh

I agree with Ssthisto.

Bechtel formally gave the name "amelanistic" to the corn snake mutant gene which prevents melanin from forming. Nobody has formally named a corn snake gene "albino". So there is no albino mutant gene in corn snakes.

The corn snake's amelanistic mutant gene is unable to produce functional tyrosinase enzyme. The lab mouse's albino mutant gene is unable to produce functional tyrosinase enzyme. So these two mutants have analogous effects on the biochemical assembly line that produces melanin.

Read a good dictionary's definition of "albino". It is considerably wider than the definition for "amelanistic". Among other things, an albino plant lacks chlorophyll.


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## kirsten

Ssthisto said:


> "Albino" is an imprecise term. It's come to mean "red eyed white" because it was originally used to describe mammals missing pigmentation, and mammals only have one skin pigment (melanin).
> 
> Albino mammals are amelanistic.
> Amelanistic reptiles are quite reasonably called "albino".
> So are anerythristic reptiles, who are missing a different pigment.


so on those grounds, you could reasonably call an amel corn snake an albino, as although they still have other colours, they have red eyes and are lacking melanin, which as i was always led to believe is the defining trait on albinism.

thats really very intersting.

another questions, having had a very brief look into corn morphs, are they all recessive?


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## Ssthisto

kirsten said:


> another questions, having had a very brief look into corn morphs, are they all recessive?


The vast majority of corn morphs are recessive to the normal wildtype allele on that gene pair, yes. Bloodred/Diffuse and Caramel MAY be codominant, with a variable expression (i.e. a het may look different to a non-carrier, but it could be a very subtle difference) and Tessera is looking like it's dominant at this point.

Of course, not all morphs are recessive to other *mutant* genes on the same allele. Amelanistic and Ultra share the same gene pair, and they're codominant to each other. Motley and Stripe share the same gene pair, and Motley is dominant to Stripe.


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## gazz

kirsten said:


> so on those grounds, you could reasonably call an amel corn snake an albino.


The name Red albino is used for Amel Red rat snakes.


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