Yes, I understand the meaning of an allele very well. To try to answer your inquiry in a non technical scientific fashion, how can you even comprehend that we have found all of the genes out there? The evidence is all around you.

How do we "find" ball python mutations. You (not you per say but rather ball python breeders) don't use genetic sequencing techniques, you don't isolate genes for in vitro testing, you don't perform controlled experiment. What do we do, we look for a visual representation of the animal. Then we try to find genetic markers that indicate what the visual representation will be and breed them. If you can't see them in the wild because they die, fall victim to predators because they lack pigmentation, are deleterious, are hidden from sight, etc, then why would you say with they don't exist? Just because you can't see them in a cage and reproduce them?

There are several genes that are not signally activated without the presence of another gene. Just because you can't see them, doesn't make them absent. What happens if a specific gene interacts and affects another gene, in turn mutating the visual appearance? To say that all we have out there now are just the same alleles of varying genes is very closed minded. To say there are no other genes because you cannot reproduce them in a cage sounds very God-complex to me.

I'm not here to change your mind. Honestly, I could care less and rarely frequent the forums but happened to catch this one. I just happened to stumble upon this topic and it seemed you were attacking someone because they wouldn't give you something and you felt you really needed to know and trivialized their achievement with incorrect information. I hope you didn't mean to come off that way, but it sounded elementary.

Good luck and remember, it isn't if you can prove anything but rather that you can disprove something.



"ALOT of these genes are variations on the same alleles which simply means a different version of the same gene! I do think there are still other "NEW' genes out there BUT for it to be a completely NEW gene and not just a variation of what we already have is going to be few and far between at this point! Exactly what evidence do YOU have that proves my statement invalid by the way, I'd just love to hear it lol ! "

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