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and the caramel hypo or caramel. Is it a T positive, is the paradigm a caramel or an offspring from a caramel to a sharp strain. Is there a difference between the caramel and the paradigm as shown in the picture that mike posted. I'm confused and don't know what he bred to have that litter of sharps and paradigms/caramels/whatever. Please clarify everything, thanks

First is this Jim "Hoppy" Hopkins???

Second the Paradigm is what is produced when a Sharon Moore Caramel aka Boawoman Hypo is bred to a Sharp strain Albino.

It has yet to be determined if any other T positive lines will have the same outcome when bred to Sharp strain animals.

A Paradigm is a animal carrying one Caramel and one Sharp Strain gene. To keep it very basic it is a visual double het at this point.

Hope this helps Vinnie

No this isn't jim hoppy hopkins, zack hopkins, small time breeder with a good genetics background. In the picture, there were sharp strains, and what else...paradigms, which could be T-positives. I thought the paradigm was the boawoman hypo. The paradigm on the paradigm.com website is a visual dh, and is double het for caramel and sharp. whats so important about the caramel then, what were the animals produced in that sharp strain litter then. still confused, if you could spell it out down to every detail, it would help out alot. I haven't checked the forum since thursday, so I'm totally lost.

Ok Zack I will do my best.

In 2004 Mike from Basically Boas Breed a Sharon Moore Caramel to a Sharp strain albino in the hopes of producing a litter of double het Sharp strain Caramel boas. He did just that, but every boa in the litter exibited a visual extreme T positive look. That visual double het is the Paradigm boa. This year he bred a Paradigm to a Sharp strain albino and got Sharps and Paradigm boas no normals. He also bred a Paradigm to a Het Sharp and got Sharps, Paradigm's and Normals. The following was posted by Paul Hollander and is the best and simpilest genetic description I can give you:

Posted by: Paul Hollander at Sat Sep 23 19:05:38 2006 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ]

First of all, all I know about paradigm boas comes from www.paradigmboa.com. We all stand or fall by its accuracy. And second, eventually the boas will tell us what gives through breeding results. Right now we are just brainstorming.

The first thing that caught my eye was that Sharp albino mated to caramel (aka boawoman hypo) produced a whole litter of paradigms and no normals. Unfortunately the number of babies was not included. However, if there were 10 or more babies, I'd expect some normals if this is not a case of multiple alleles.

>I believe that the Caramel Hypo gene and the Sharp gene are completely separate genes and not the same gene at all. The notion that a Tyrosinase positive and a Tyrosinase negative gene could be the exact same gene seems like a pipe dream to me.

I agree with this. I do not think the caramel (boawoman hypo) and the Sharp albino genes are the same gene, too.

What I do think is that Sharp albino and caramel are different genes that had the same ancestor gene. In other words, a normal gene in one snake contained a mistake when it was reproduced. This gene came down to us as the Sharp albino gene. And the same normal gene in another snake had a different mistake, which came down to us as the caramel mutant gene. Think of the original normal gene as a long word, like Eisenhower. In one location there was a change in one letter, say the h becomes a b and the spelling is now Eisenbower. In a different location there is a different misspelling, say the s becomes a g and the spelling becomes Eigenhower. "Eisenhower" is analogous to the normal gene, "Eisenbower" is analagous to the caramel gene, and "Eigenhower" is analogous to the Sharp albino.

Here's how a case of multiple alleles works. Genes come in pairs in individual creatures. But in this case, there are three genes that might be plugged into two slots. They do not all fit. If I have two wall electrical plugs, and two lamps, two toasters, and two TVs, only two of these six appliances can be run at the same time, but they could be any combination of two.

Take a piece of paper and tear it into six pieces. Write normal on two pieces, Sharp albino on two pieces, and caramel on two pieces. Divide the pieces into two piles, left and right, so that each pile contains one normal, one caramel, and one Sharp albino. Now pull one slip from each pile. These two slips are a pair of genes. There are six different combinations of one slip from each pile:
1. normal and normal
2. normal and caramel
3. normal and Sharp albino
4. caramel and caramel
5. Sharp albino and Sharp albino
6. caramel and Sharp albino
By the way, pile source does not matter as long as one piece of paper comes from the left pile and the other from the right pile. A pair made of a caramel from the left pile and a Sharp albino from the right pile is the same as a pair made of a caramel from the right pile and a Sharp albino from the left pile.

Now let's put the names of the appearances to these combinations:
1. normal and normal = normal
2. normal and caramel = normal (het caramel)
3. normal and Sharp albino = normal (het Sharp albino)
4. caramel and caramel = caramel
5. Sharp albino and Sharp albino = Sharp albino
6. caramel and Sharp albino = paradigm boa

For what it's worth, there are cases of multiple alleles with more than eight rather than just three. One case of multiple alleles is in the mouse. The tyrosinase negative albino mutant has several mutant alleles that can make melanin. These other mutant alleles make different amounts of melanin, but in all cases they make less than the normal allele makes.

Hope this helps.

Paul Hollander

Yes they are DH for Both Sharp Albino and Sharon Moore Caramel aka Boawoman Hypo.

Thanks so much for sitting down and explaining it to me. It def cleared up some things. I think the paradigm is a T positive, if it's not, then it is a true form of hypomelanism, recessive and smokes ideas that the columbian hypos that we have now are truly hypo, and shows them to be just a color variant that passes down autosomal dominant.

I agree I think it is a form of T positive.

A double het is heterozygous for two gene pairs. There is only one gene pair required to produce paradigm boas in Chris Gilbert's theory. I'd probably say het Moore caramel//Sharp albino.

Paul Hollander