Posted by:
RandyRemington
at Fri May 9 21:30:35 2008 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by RandyRemington ]
Paul's retired pro geneticist acquaintance is taking the noble scientific task of trying to prove to an acceptable degree of certainty (can never be truly be 100% sure) that a mutation is homozygous lethal. I would be surprised if given the results so far and the similar accepted homozygous lethal mutations in other species if this geneticist was continuing the experiment with great hopes of producing a viable homozygous animal.
In the case of the spider ball pythons we may well have passed the point where many would still breed spider X spider hoping to produce a homozygous spider (regardless of what it might look like). I agree that a homozygous spider would be a valuable thing to have for breeding purposes but I think most have given up on a homozygous spider. Perhaps now it's just to be seen if anyone has the energy and tenacity to spend the perhaps decades it might be necessary to mathematically approach proving spider homozygous lethal.
Sure we still could just have missed proving a homozygous spider this long. Hard to even say how many possible homozygous spiders have been produced with very little breeding results available to the public. But if there is a viable homozygous spider it will only take one to eventually prove the possibility. But if it turns out spider is homozygous lethal it could take a very long time to prove that from the absence of a homozygous spider. Our best bet might be if a group of consciences ball python breeders can work together to both produce a fair number of possible homozygous spiders and then breed them all out and pool the carefully recorded results. It's probably too big a job for even a large breeder to do by themselves.
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Proving a Negative - RandyRemington, Fri May 9 21:30:35 2008