Hi John,.....

No, those two genes are VERY different from each other, even though they might look somewhat similar to many people. The extreme hypos are an exaggerated form of hypomelanism that is a light silvery/gray with ruby-red eyes. This is a recessively inherent gene.

The t-plus nelsoni were first produced by pure accident by a guy named Christos Skliris over in France in 2005, and were genuinely authentic L.t.nelsoni with no "stolen" genetics from being crossed with anything else whatsoever. They are a form of tyrosinaise positive "albino" (but are not amelanistic) that has an ENTIRELY different unique mode of inheritence from most all other known colubrid genetics. This t-plus gene is a co-dominant gene and is 100% allelic with the typical amel gene. When you breed a t-plus to an amel, you will produce roughly 50% amels and 50% t-plus offspring. In other words, it cannot be visually expressed without the amel gene also being involved in the two parent's genetics. And every single VISUAL t-plus animal also has a normal amel allele on the very same chromosome locus. It's tough to explain all this in a simple post, but they are NOTHING alike whatsoever......NOTHING!. A normal looking nelsoni cannot be "het" for the t-plus gene either, but it can be het for the amel gene.

These snakes aren't really a light silvery gray ether like good examples of the extreme hypos are, but rather a sort of chocolatety/purple hue with deep ruby-red, or sometimes deep purplish/red eyes. The look they have is thought to be from the pigment cells known as melanophores posessing tyrosinaise which in itself is a "pre-cursor" chemical that is synthesized with other amino acids to produce normal dark pigment (melanin). However, these pigment cells do not allow the tyrosinaise to mix normally as they should with the other amino acids, or at best, only allow only a small quantity to be synthesized into melanin, so basically your eyes see just the tyrosinaise within these pigment cells, or maybe only just a very small amount of melanin in the scale's pigment cells giving it this unique look.

Yes, this either helped you some, or confused you much more, and there is WAAAY more to it than I just explained. But take my word for it, the two genes of these snakes are as different to each other as night and day...

good luck with things my friend!



~Doug
-----
"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

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"some are just born to troll and roll"

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