>I know that an albino can't produce the pigment melanin.



Unless it's an albino plant. They can't produce the pigment chlorophyll.



>I have been told that if you breed an albino with a lavender albino that the result will look normal; black and yellow (in king snakes)



I don't know enough about king snake mutants to confirm or deny this. However, this is the usual result when working with two independent recessive mutant genes.



>Does this mean that lavender albinos have the gene to make melanin, but the "lavender" gene causes it to be supressed?



Actually, there are many genes working together to produce normal color. If one of those genes does not work as expected, then the animal does not look normal. If a different gene does not work as expected, the animal again does not look normal, but the abnormality may be more or less different from the look produced by the first abnormal (mutant) gene.



Think of the genes as a football team. If the team performs as expected, the play succeeds. If any one player screws up, the play fails. But just how the play fails depends on which player screws up. For example, a missed block and an incomplete pass are two different ways for a play to fail. The failure results from the action or inaction of different players.



>And there for the normal looking offspring will be double hets? And these double hets could be used to produce albinos, lavender albinos or both?



Correct, if albino and lavender albino are two independent recessive mutant genes.



>Is one form of albino more desirable than the other?



Sorry; I don't know which the king snake keepers think is more desirable. In my opinion, desirability is strictly a case of YMMV.



Paul Hollander

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