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RE: Venom in Hybrid snakes?
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by BGF on November 17, 2009
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We don't know anything about dominance/recessive/co-dominance etc in regards to the venom genes and thus how they will recombine in a hybridisation. As there is going to be a mixture of orthologous/paralogous genes it gets even more complicated.
It is not just an academic question as captive pools of snakes from different geographical ranges of the same species may have a mixture of venom variants and thus line breeding can produce hybrids of sorts. How this influences the relative antigenic mixture and thus the coverage and specificity of the resultant antivenom is unknown but could have significant medical implications.
It'll be interesting.
I suspect that AquaHerps organisation will have results before I will since I have higher priorities at the moment.
Cheers
B
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RE: Venom in Hybrid snakes?
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by AquaHerp on November 17, 2009
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Aird et al. (1989) and Wilkenson et al. (1991) investigated venoms in the Mojave rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus scutulatus). Although not addressed directly, these works appear to provide evidence of co dominance of the venom phenotype both at the inter-and intraspecific level. Two distinct venoms (A and B) are produced in C. s. scutulatus and these intergrade to produce a third venom with characteristics of both former venoms (Wilkenson et al, 1991). When C. atrox hybridizes with C. s. scutulatus the offspring have venom with characteristics of both species, while a cross between the hybrids showed venom characteristics of C. atrox, C. s. scutulatus or both (Aird et al 1991).From this information it could be hypothesized that the genes coding for venom are expressed co dominantly in the heterozygote form.
Phenotypes of some heterozygotes may appear exactly intermediate between that of two homozygotes. Sometimes however, they may be more similar to one of the parental phenotypes than the other. Thus the level of phenotypic expression in heterozygotes varies with degree of dominace of one allele over another. In some instances a single gene may have multiple phenotypic effects, with no obvious physiological connection.
In other words...what Dr. Fry said. The thing with investigations is that one question breeds 100 more. While the quest to arrive at that answer is tumultuous, it is the avenue that we must take to arrive at a logical conclusion. As Dr. Fry pointed out, there is no clear-cut answer to this question due to so many variables that have to be explored as well.
I will be extracting from a rattlesnake hybrid in about an hour. Personally I would love to work away on some of this, but I already have too many other projects that need to be tied up. My office is quickly becoming the museum of unfinished projects! Probably due to my love of snakes and innate fear of paperwork. :)
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