Posted by:
Paul Hollander
at Thu Aug 21 13:40:17 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Paul Hollander ]
>They will all be 'normal salmons', or codominant.
No salmon boa is "normal". A normal boa constrictor looks like the majority taken from the wild. That lets out all salmons.
A boa constrictor with one salmon mutant gene paired with one normal gene is a salmon or heterozygous salmon boa constrictor.
>If you breed the super to a 'regular' salmon, the boas will be half co-cominant (regular salmon), half dominant (supers).. but since you can not accurately visibly differentiate, they will all be considered possible super/dominant salmons.
A boa constrictor with a pair of salmon mutant genes is a homozygous salmon boa constrictor. Slang for homozygous salmon is super salmon, which is derived from the "super tiger" reticulated python. The homozygous tiger or super tiger retic can be reliably distinguished from the heterozygous tiger. As apparantly many of the homozygous salmon boas cannot be distinguished from heterozygous salmons, "super" isn't very descriptive here.
Dominant and codominant do not describe an individual animal. They describe a mutant gene. A mutant is a dominant when the heterozygous mutant animal looks like a homozygous mutant animal or when the two cannot be reliably distinguished. A mutant is a codominant when a heterozygous animal can be reliably distinguished from both a homozygous mutant animal and a normal animal.
Call me picky about vocabulary if you will. But IMHO, there is no benefit to using a genetics ghetto dialect. Especially when some of the readers of this forum will eventually take genetics courses where they will be required to use the standard definitions. And others will eventually work with species where everyone uses standard definitions.
Paul Hollander
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Standard genetics terminology - Paul Hollander, Thu Aug 21 13:40:17 2003