recessive whites

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Hello to anyone who remembers me...it's been a long time. I still lurk every now and then, and this conversation was interesting enough I HAD to post.

Let me start with odds are very much in favor of these two mutations being one in the same. That said without reading the paper, only this thread I do have to agree it is not absolute. It all goes back to genes actual function, making proteins.

A cell does not know the difference between recessive genes and dominant genes. It produces proteins from the entire genome. The difference between recessives and dominants comes at expression. We call a trait recessive when in the heterozygous state it's proteins do not cause a change in the phenotype from the wild type, which in chinchillas is what we call a standard. So, IF two unique and different mutations occurred at different times and different places that happened to effect the same protein, or at the same loci in genetics speak, hybrids of these two mutations would display a non wild type phenotype while still technically being heterozygous for each trait.

If I was involved with these animals my follow up to the test breedings would be finding their common ancestor and removing all doubt.
 
Jeff, I know that you are good with numbers and with genetics, so I would like to take a moment to ask you a couple questions regarding this if I may.

You say that it is most likely they are the same mutation, and obviously I agree with that.

Now with regards to the rest of your information, with all of the very, very many loci available, and the many, many proteins available, what are the numerical chances, I understand you probably don't have an exact number but an estimate if you will, that two different mutations could occupy the same loci and together in their hetero state produce a mutation color AND it look identical to the parents, who of course just happen to look the same anyway.

And does this happen with any other mutation known in chinchillas? In other species?

While I understand it IS possible, what is the probability? It is possible that I am related to a saber tooth tiger in some genetic way, but the probability... points to being not likely. As I said earlier if we were going to require extensive "nit picking" about genetics before labeling simple expressed colors, we would have probably over 100 categories of standards, who all look identical. Sometimes it becomes the difference between scientifically speaking, and what "works" and can be seen and understood without testing every animal.
 
How were they determined to be beiges rather than actual whites? Is that from the red eyes?


I have a neighbor who got a fading white at petco so one of their distributors has it in their lines.
 
Dreamlite and Tickelchin
Pam from Alderbrook inB Canada would be the person to talk too about he RW. Pam is the person that bought ghe RW herd from Bob Lowe. Pam, about 2 years ago downsizes them and sold some to
Sumiko, Mish, myself, anf a couple others I do not know of I believe.


People working with them, Pam, myself, Sumiko, Riven that I personnally am aware of.
 
With this theme - I have a kit that at first looked white, it is now showing signs of VERY lite beige. Trouble is the mom is a dark tan and dad is a dark ebony - what is it?
 
Luke does NOT have any TOV Ranch animals in his herd and never has. I just wanted to make sure that that is known.

That's not true, Ronda sent him some.

This picture was taken of one two weeks before that chinchilla was sent to him. Ronda got them from Rod and Donna Reed (Furball) who purchased them from Serenity (Tov Ranch).

I thought the RW and the fading whites that TOV ranch had were different.
They are, don't know why there are two discussions going on here.

Hello to anyone who remembers me...it's been a long time.
Glad to see you are still around, and hello!

I have a neighbor who got a fading white at petco so one of their distributors has it in their lines.
These lines are all over. It just takes so long for them to start fading they are incredibly difficult to trace. I think I mentioned in another thread that Ronda wholesaled a bunch of Sapphire v/c's, Blue Diamonds and Violet s/c's before she realized they were a unique color. She probably wholesaled some fading whites too. When you buy out a herd you never really know what is in it and she purchased dozens of herds. The first thing you do is wholesale all of the males you don't need and that puts a lot of nice animals into the pet market... and sometimes some unique colors as well.
 
They are beige because they are beige, not white. White's should have a blue hue to them, not golden. Red eyes are not indicative of beige, there are beige with dark non-red eyes. I've never had a RW with red eyes, mine have all had dark eyes.
 
Just caught this thread. I have not claimed to "prove" anything. All I claimed is what I did.

I bred my Lowe Recessive White male, purchased directly from Pam of Alderbrook, to TWO of Paul's goldbar females, whose lines go back to Serena of Chinchilla Park Place. The first litter was a single female kit. The second litter was born a month later, a male and female. Since both mutations were known to be simple recessives, if these mutations were on different loci, we should have gotten standard dual carriers. None of these kits were standard, all were goldbar.

I am aware that 3 offspring is not statistically significant enough (even if, so far, it is 100% bred true) to claim proof that the Lowe Recessive White and Goldbar are, nucleotide for nucleotide, the same mutation (though I am confident they're at the same locus) - but I am also not out to mass produce rw x goldbar kits just to provide enough empirical evidence. I believe the cross was necessary to see if they might have been the same mutation, and the second cross because science must be observable and repeatable... but now that my curiosity is satisfied, I believe work on improving them with high quality standards should be continued. They very much need it.

I'd be very interested in hearing how these crossings were disproved.

Attached image shows my male in the run and Paul's second female cleaning the second kit, before the third kit was born.
 

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I personally think that proving them to be the same is better for both because it opens up the gene pool more allowing them to be worked with more easily...

I guess I was always told that if it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck... it's probably a duck.

They look the same and breed true... probably the same.
 
Jeff, I know that you are good with numbers and with genetics, so I would like to take a moment to ask you a couple questions regarding this if I may.

You say that it is most likely they are the same mutation, and obviously I agree with that.

Now with regards to the rest of your information, with all of the very, very many loci available, and the many, many proteins available, what are the numerical chances, I understand you probably don't have an exact number but an estimate if you will, that two different mutations could occupy the same loci and together in their hetero state produce a mutation color AND it look identical to the parents, who of course just happen to look the same anyway.

And does this happen with any other mutation known in chinchillas? In other species?

While I understand it IS possible, what is the probability? It is possible that I am related to a saber tooth tiger in some genetic way, but the probability... points to being not likely. As I said earlier if we were going to require extensive "nit picking" about genetics before labeling simple expressed colors, we would have probably over 100 categories of standards, who all look identical. Sometimes it becomes the difference between scientifically speaking, and what "works" and can be seen and understood without testing every animal.

It would be very extremely rare for two different mutations to happen at the same loci. However if it was the same mutation at the same loci due to some inherit weakness in the original gene that made that mutation more likely to happen....

It probably comes down to a gene that was not fully mutated back in a distant line, and finally it under went a deletion or transcription error that was more likely to happen because of a weakness. Either that or the RW gene was hiding for a longer than thought.

After all I am sure some new mutations that crop up are missed or thrown out as undesirable by that breeder.
 
There are many instances of different mutations occurring on one locus of many animals. In rabbits, for example, Sable, Himalayan, Chinchilla, and REW are all different color mutations on the C locus.

However, these different mutations produce different phenotypes. For two different mutations at one locus to produce the same phenotype is less likely - though not out of the question. What's far less likely is for RW and Goldbar to be two separate spontaneous mutations but on the same locus, producing the same phenotype, appearing within a few years of each other and in roughly the same geographical location. Odds on all that happening are extremely low. So yes, I do believe they are the same, but I have not "proved" it.
 
I know of others who have crossed the 2 and had the same results as Mish had.

We have a few fading whites in our breeding herd, nothing imported from out west, they just started showing up in a couple of our lines.

Jeff its good to see you are still around. Do you still have chins?
 
They're gorgeous, beautiful colour. I saw a herd with them for sale over here, wish I knew who they'd ended up with.
 
This was interesting to me that their is such an issue on these two when no one seems to be interested in all the other recessive mutes.
Are they in a different category? I do not believe so! Until one is willing to look into their full genetic codes, how can they not be seen the same way as all the other recessive mutations who have not been tested.
Really, it is a dead end until then.
 
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I had heard that there was found to be a common ancestor between the chinchillas used for the testing. So the experiment was deemed faulty.
 
I have three generations of pedigree info on my male as well as the two females from Paul. The two females were related to each other, but there is no common ancestor between the two females and my male with the info I have. If someone else found a common ancestor between them further back, it's just more evidence that goldbars and RWs are the same.
 
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