To begin with, no snake has millions of genes. Nobody knows how many genes a snake has. That hasn't even been figured out for humans. The quess for humans is 30,000-50,000. That might be reasonable for snakes as well but it is not likely to be more than that. At any rate, we are not going to find out until the cost of vertebrate genome sequencing comes down to a few thousand dollars per animal. That looks to be 5-10 years in the future.



However many genes a snake has, most are pretty much irrelevant with regard to phenotype. These are genes that affect the visible pheotype of all snakes in essentially the same way. Genes that carry on essential cell functions, for instance, can vary slightly from species to species but it makes no difference in how the cell functions work. For the snake breeder, it is the genes that affect growth rate, color, pattern, shape, hardiness, behavior and fertility that are important (If I forgot an important component of the phenotype, feel free to add). This reduces the number of genes one has to consider to a still large but realistically manageable number. The problem comes in identifying them and determining how they interact. A number of genes are known, of course, at least for the cornsnake. What is needed is a website with a comprehensive list of properly identified and symbolized genes for the various species of snake and descriptions of how the various alleles of these genes interact, including how they interact in hybrids.



Bigfoot

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