>What if Sharp and Caramel are on the same allele?

Small terminology correction. Sharp and Caramel are not ON the same allele. Alleles are different versions of the same gene and have the same location in the same chromosome. In other words, if Sharp and Caramel are different versions of the same gene, then Sharp is an allele and Caramel is an allele.

>Because from your breeding:
Sharp X Paradigm (f1: Sharp X Caramel)
you got Sharp and Paradigm, correct?

>If the Paradigm was truely DH, shouldn't you also get:
WT het Sharp, and WT het Caramel? That is to say, you are missing wild type phenotype from your offspring.

>If the Caramel and Sharp are on the same allele:
breeding a Paradigm to Sharp will give you all homozygous animals.
Depending which allele they recieved from the sire, they would be Sharp or Paradigm.
Since the only allele they could get from the dam was Sharp.

>So the Paradigm is a homozygous animal. If this theory works.
Now to explain the phenotype of Paradigms...

>They are basically a combination of Sharp and Caramel, some aspects of each create the morph.
If the two mutations are on the same allele.
Like a red X white flower makes pink.

More terminology corrections: If Caramel and Sharp are alleles, then breeding a snake with a pair of Caramel genes to a snake with a pair of Sharp genes produces babies with a Caramel gene paired with a Sharp gene. As the Sharp and Caramel genes are different alleles, the baby snakes are heterozygous. By definition, "homozygous" means that the two genes are the same. By definition, "heterozygous" means that the two genes are different. See www.dictionary.com.

I'm going to make a list of possible gene pairs if there are three possible alleles. "//" means a pair of chromosomes. There will be a name to the left and another name to the right of the "//". If the pair is "normal//Sharp", it means that the pair of chromosomes has a normal gene on one chromosome and a Sharp albino gene at the same location on the other chromosome.

If there are three possible alleles (normal, Sharp, Caramel), the possible gene pairs are as follows:
1. normal//normal. Two identical genes = homozygous.
2. normal//Sharp. Two different genes = heterozygous.
3. Sharp//Sharp. Two identical genes = homozygous.
4. normal//Caramel. Two different genes = heterozygous.
5. Caramel//Caramel. Two identical genes = homozygous.
6. Caramel//Sharp. Two different genes = heterozygous. This is the Paradigm.

Double Het or DH means heterozygous in two gene pairs. The Paradigm is Caramel//Sharp, which has only one gene pair heterozygous.

>This is the only theory I can come up with to explain F1 Paradigms, and a FULL litter of them.

Works for me. The same theory has been advanced for the amelanistic and ultra mutants in the corn snake and for the tyrosinase positive albino and xanthic mutants in the black rat snake. H.B. Bechtel reported on the black rat snake in one of the 1985 issues of the Journal of Heredity.

This is from www.paradigmboa.com:
"Our first breeding was a Paradigm X Sharp Albino, the results were astounding. This breeding resulted in 75% Sharp Albinos and 25% Paradigms."

Using pairs of genes, a Paradigm x Sharp Albino mating would be
Caramel//Sharp x Sharp//Sharp -->
1/2 Caramel//Sharp (Paradigm)
1/2 Sharp//Sharp (Sharp Albino)

Perhaps the difference between the litter cited above and the expectation was caused by a small litter size.

Paul Hollander

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