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Originally Posted by crotalusadamanteus
Hey, simple works for me, I'm not a Biochemist.  Still sounds alot like what i was trying to say though.
In a manner of simplistic speach. From what I've read, T- CANNOT produce melanin. T+ can . In T- it will never happen, in T+ all the right stuff is there, but not connected properly. When the genes, or enzymes, or whatever, start to connect properly, you get varying degrees of melanin showing thru in T+. Like lavender as an example.
Knowing this, it would seem that the visual of the snake itself would be fairly proof positive. Maybe not actual PROOF, but you get what I mean. |
T- cannot produce melanin because of a nonfunctional tyrosinase enzyme.
Some T+ snakes can't produce melanin pigment either. They have functional tyrosinase, and the actual cause of the lack of melanin is unknown. Probably something else is not working right.
Some T+ snakes do produce some melanin, but less than normal. The cause may be a partly functional tyrosinase enzyme. Or something else is wrong. Perhaps a mutant gene causes the pigment cells to produce fewer than normal pigment granules. Or the pigment granules are abnormal somehow.
In my opinion, the T- vs T+ split is like looking at a car that won't run and saying that the cause is either a bad battery or a good battery. If the battery is good, then something else is wrong -- broken wiring, nonfunctioning ignition switch, no gas, etc.
In the black rat snake, there are two albinos, T- and T+. They have been tested. The T- has a nonfunctional tyrosinase enzyme, and something else produces the albino condition in the T+, but we do not know what, yet. We do know that they are caused by different mutant genes.
In boa constrictors, there are two albinos, Kahl strain and Sharp strain. Neither has been tested. They seem to be caused by different mutant genes. They can't both have nonfunctional tyrosinase. I can look at the two and say that neither is normal. But just looking at them will not tell me which has nonfuctional tyrosinase. Maybe both of them have functional tyrosinase and different something elses are broken in each strain.
In other words, we have two cars that will not run, and we know that the conditions result from different causes. Which has a bad battery? Or do both have good batteries? Maybe one has no gas and the other has a bad ignition switch.
You tell me. All I know is that we need more tests to narrow the possibilities.