Don't know that my previous comments were much help - but to expand on that -
There are some indications that the bloodred gene may function as a co-dominant in corns. The hets often (typically) display pattern abnormalities (diffusion of saddle pattern, loss of belly pattern) that are intermediate between normals and full bloodred pattern. I don't think it is clear if this is true co-dominance or incomplete penetrance or a polygenic trait at this point, but hets do look different from homozygous form (the super form).
There have been some suggestions that butter (the caramel gene) may have some similar influence - those that are het tend to show more yellow coloration - eg in amel het butter. Still very speculative on this one - many snakes that are het don't look any more yellow than non hets - the increased yellow people have seen could be just because the lines that originally gave rise to the caramel gene tended toward more yellow background color (independent genes selected for at the same time because they are closely linked genetically, but not alleles).
Certainly co-dominants would be fun to work with in corns - nice to get morphs in your first generation instead of having to wait for second generations to see really neat stuff come together. I think bloodred has a lot to still offer the corn population - many combinations have not yet been done and seems like much of the problem with low viability has been reduced.
The Serpenco web site and corn forum is always a great place to get up to speed on (and overwhelmed by) corn mutations.
mary v.
__________________
Mary VanderKop
|