what the heck is het?

[EL Ziggy]

I guess I could always use Google but I thought I'd ask you all. What does it mean when a snake is het or possible het? For instance my new bull snake is 100% het axanthic and patternless, 66% poss het whitesided, 50% poss het 2 axanthic and hypo. All I know is she's a beautiful snake with an occasional attitude problem :)

[Mikoh4792]

100% het just means het.

Any % of pos het means he is possibly het or not. So for example if your snake is 66% het there is a 66% chance that he is het.

So in other words, an animal is either het or not. There is no inbetween.


Het means heterozygous for a certain gene(ie. recessive genes like albino, granite...etc in carpet pythons).

[ScalelessTime]

From what I know, a "het" snake is a snake with hidden genes. If both snakes with the same het genes are breed together, like an albino het, you will get a 100% albino snake. I might be wrong though.

[Mikoh4792]

http://www.uic.edu/classes/bms/bms655/gfx/punnettsquare2.gif


Above you see that both the mom and dad have lowercase "d's". Those combinations that are Dd are het for d and the last one which dd is d. If d stood for albino, the dd would be albino, and Dd would be het for albino. DD is just normal and not het for anything.

[MDT]

Yes, and DD, Dd are visually "normals" (but Dd can pass gene to offspring) and dd is visual/expressive for the gene (in Mikoh's example, albinism)..

[Jim Smith]

El-Ziggy,

There's a nice little book called Genetics for Herpers by Charles Pritzel that you might find helpful. There's quite a bit of information in it so you may have to read it a couple of times to sort it all out but it's very much worth the purchase price of $14.00 Genetics For Herpers: The Reptile and Amphibian Breeder's Guide to Genetics: Charles Pritzel: Amazon.com: Books (http://www.amazon.com/Genetics-Herpers-Reptile-Amphibian-Breeders/dp/B000ZJVXPM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390678440&sr=1-1&keywords=Genetics+for+Herpers)

MIKOH4792,

Very nice job of describing and diagraming the genetic basics.

[kelzerman]

Everyone beat me :(

[Sublimeballs]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since biology class.

Het is short for heterozygous; meaning one of two alleles on a genetic locus has a mutation. Het applies to not just ressecive traits as everyone has listed(but is mostly only used to describe recessive traits in our hooby), but dominate and co-dominate traits.

When both the alleles carry the mutation it is the homozygous form.

In recessive traits both alleles are required to carry the mutation to show a morph. (Homozygous)

In dominate traits only one has to carry the mutation to show the morph(heterozygous); if both carry the mutation(homozygous)it still appears the same as if only one carried it.

In co-dominate traits it will show a mutation in the het form like dominate traits. But, unlike dominate traits, in homozygous form it produces the "super" morphs.

[Mikoh4792]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since biology class.

Het is short for heterozygous; meaning one of two alleles on a genetic locus has a mutation. Het applies to not just ressecive traits as everyone has listed(but is mostly only used to describe recessive traits in our hooby), but dominate and co-dominate traits.

When both the alleles carry the mutation it is the homozygous form.

In recessive traits both alleles are required to carry the mutation to show a morph. (Homozygous)

In dominate traits only one has to carry the mutation to show the morph(heterozygous); if both carry the mutation(homozygous)it still appears the same as if only one carried it.

In co-dominate traits it will show a mutation in the het form like dominate traits. But, unlike dominate traits, in homozygous form it produces the "super" morphs.

Bingo, except when speaking in "reptile hobby" terms people will refer het to just the recessive forms, since co-dom and incomplete-dom morphs like zebra are just called " zebra" or "super zebra". It would be confusing to go into detail on all aspects of heterozygous.

[EL Ziggy]

Thanks for the great info everybody. Unfortunately I have no clue what most of most of it means. I can comprehend dominant, co-dominant and recessive traits but not how they all interact, co-mingle, and reproduce the various morphs. I'm very impressed, you all are pretty smart ;). Thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

[Sublimeballs]

Bingo, except when speaking in "reptile hobby" terms people will refer het to just the recessive forms, since co-dom and incomplete-dom morphs like zebra are just called " zebra" or "super zebra". It would be confusing to go into detail on all aspects of heterozygous.

I think you might have missed something.

but is mostly only used to describe recessive traits in our hooby

Yeah I didn't want to bring in incompletes in. Just a brief overveiw of the subject.

[Starbuck]

Thanks for the great info everybody. Unfortunately I have no clue what most of most of it means. I can comprehend dominant, co-dominant and recessive traits but not how they all interact, co-mingle, and reproduce the various morphs. I'm very impressed, you all are pretty smart ;). Thanks again for sharing your wealth of knowledge.

saying something is '100% het for XXXX' means that the animal is guaranteed to have a particular gene (for XXXX), even though he may not show it, it could be masked by the Wild Type. If you see a smaller number, i.e. 66% het for something, that means that based on the parents KNOWN genes and the grandparents, the individual is 66% likely to have the particular gene in question. You MUST know the parents and grandparents genetics in order to make these determinations.

If an animal is Heterozygous for a Dominant gene, you can't tell unless you breed him, because he looks the same whether he has one copy or two, heterozygous for a recessive gene will not show anything at all.

If you mate a normal, homozygous wild type animal with a homozygous albino animal (both parents have two identical copies or each gene, dad is WT and mom is Albino), ALL of the offspring will appear normal, but will have one WT gene from dad and one albino gene from mom, so they will be 100% het for albino. It starts to get very complicated very quickly after that heheh...