Breaking Research: Gender and MORPH Tests from Snake Sheds!
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- Today we visited Dr. Ben Morrill and Dr. Patrick Macknight (aka Dr. Smith) at Rare Genetics Inc in Virginia! Rare Genetics takes your shed skins and tests the gender of your snakes (currently available for colubrids and venomous species, soon to also include boas and pythons!), and within the next few months will also be able to test your snake's shed to see if they contain genetic morphs! Do you have a ball python that's "possibly het for X gene"? Soon you can mail in its shed to Rare Genetics to find out!
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Hi! I'm a molecular biologist from the UK, with regards to the amplified DNA for python, they could use restriction enzymes to chop up the amplicons in specific sites. You can use in silico research to see what sizes the resulting bands would be after restriction enzyme digestion, and then run the digested amplicon on a gel, and see if the pattern matches. This way you can still just use a gel without sequencing. All you have to do is find the right restriction enzymes to give a distinc male/female band pattern on a gel. I hope this helps
You should think about doing something similar to these guys over here in the UK. I know I'd pay for it if it was available, and I don't think sending things off to the US will be particularly viable. Who knows, you could maybe even reach out to these guys for a partnership so you don't have to go the long way around to build up samples.
Email them! Get you some paper publications out of it. 😉
@@SweatyBaps On that note, today was my last day on my recent post-doc researcher contract... I have a lot of experience in this stuff, and totally available for the work, I'm just currently labless.... but free for hire...
I like your funny words, magic man (now fr thats sounds super interesting thanks for the info, but its 4am and i cant process it)
@@tomnyskull literally same
This seems to be very much more useful than just trying to identify the colors and patterns by crossbreeding two morphs.
I think this would be a really neat way for field biologists to collect data regarding populations of certain species. Especially if they are elusive, collecting skins to genetically test sex might be a helpful add-on. Plus, less stress on individuals if they're not being wrangled lol. E-DNA is so cool
A company in Australia does a lot of ecology studies based on water and soil samples. They look at the e-DNA in the soil and sequence it out for population studies to reduce the time spent trapping and searching for animals. Genomic sequencing is just the beginning tho, then you need to math your way to the correct population estimates
Thats a verry interessting idea. I just imagine that it would actually be difficult to get the right amount of funding for this type of research.
Memento mori.
@@Elizabeth-iv2pr I know e-DNA research labs exist, but if it could be more wildly available and could test for a broader range of species? Oh that'd be awesome
This is a really great point! My initial thought was that this takes a lot of resources for just sexing snakes when there are other, arguably easier methods. I didn’t think of it this way, though.
These seem like great tests for rescues! And it doesn't hurt the snake at all, amazing
@Viorr--10 💫 no lol. Stupid bot
@@cloudedfreedom6286 why are you replying to a bot...
@@dev7822 because I feel like it? 💀
@@cloudedfreedom6286 weird 🥴
Truly amazing that they can do that.
This is SO amazing! And I can't believe how easy and affordable these guys have made sure to make the entire process! Less than $20? AND you don't even need a printer??? That is so cool that they are and they have made this a reality for anyone, not just big time breeders! Genetic tests for dogs and cats are hundreds of dollars for some pretty basic and non-actionable info, I'm just blown away at how cool and ACCESSIBLE this is!! And honestly I was surprised that shed skin holds so much readable DNA, that makes this whole thing just so expandable. Super duper excited to see just how far they can go! :D
The cost difference is going to be largely due to the big difference between a standardised pcr test and a full sequencing analysis, but I was surprised it wasn't more like 50 dollars per test. I suppose that's the difference between people working for profit and people working for the cause
A PCR test is so so so much cheaper and easier than a full sequence needed for vet genetic tests and a PCR can only really look for so many markers in the DNA. A full sequence gives you much more information
They tested my hognose snakes shed. Funny story, I had emailed you all first and you replied that it my snake looked like a long tailed female. They confirmed that information. I now have a sassy female 😂🤣
They identified my male corn snake. Now that he's a little bit older, I can say based on his behavior during breeding season last year, the results were very accurate.
If they can get the morph tests down, this is gonna be the next big thing for the reptile world, for sure. I hope they'll get it sometime soon!!!
Wow! It would be cool if they could make a snake DNA database where you could find where your snake's wild ancestors come from, if the snake is a mix of different species, or if your snake has relatives in captivity.
Oh wow I didn't even think of that- with enough data on the captive bred populations, you could prove that the animal you're looking to adopt is indeed captive bred and not through sketchy and possibly illegal importation!
Very cool. Some captive populations are descended from a pretty small number of individuals, so you should be able to tell if you have a wild caught animal because it would have wildly different genetics
This is literally groundbreaking.
Now if they could do it for tarantula molts for slings, it'd be LIFE CHANGING
I used Rare Genetics to test 4 California garters I got from you in 2020, they were great to work with and the results were emailed to me less than 2 weeks. So excited for them to expand sex determination testing to pythons!!
I sent my sheds off to these guys last week, I’m super excited to get our gender results! Had to ask a few questions and he was super quick and helpful in his replies. Loving this video!
As a Biochemistry graduate of over 30 years, I find this to be an awesome advancement for our hobby! Well done gentlemen, I look forward to seeing where this guys and will be looking into your Facebook page and website. Congratulations 🍾
OMG, locality and sub-specie testing for boas would be GAME CHANGING. Hell, for other snakes it would too but to know lineage mix for boas would be incredible, for True Red Tails, Imperator, and the proposed "Sigma" boas from Mexico or Central American countries/Islands. So cool to see this type of genetic testing being pushed forward!!!!
It would be amazing when they are able to do testing on bull snakes if they can determine if Stripey does have a genetic variation that is unique to him or not.
That would be imposible to do with this technique as they don't know wich gene they are looking for. And small mutations will not show up on this. (unless you are able to cut the gene) It mainly shows if a gene is there or not. (verry usefull when modifying cells, for example introducing a gene for human insulin in yeast or bacteria) There are test for small mutations but they can only be developed if you know the affected gene very well. The only way to find out if stripey has a mutation would be a full genome sequencing (or sequencing all patern related genes) and look if any gene is different compared to a normal bull snake, this is quite exspensive.
Im curious if they can tell age through shed also! I rescued my BP a year ago, but wasn't told age or morph, only gender. I know she's full grown, but no actual number. I'd be curious to send her shed to them!
same for my beardie I'd love to know his exact age
Age is really hard to determine from just DNA alone. Cells work hard to make sure that change or damage doesn't come to it over time so DNA shouldn't really show signs of aging. The closest marker you could use would be telomere length, but I'm only knowledgeable in how it works in humans and don't know if degradation of telomere length over time is as noticeable, if at all, in reptiles. Plus that would probably require more sophisticated tech than a qualitative agarose gel test. I suspect that a vet would be able to get a better range for the snake's age since they can look at the animal as a whole.
I'm not sure how age could be determined by DNA. Maybe by measuring and comparing telomere lengths?
They would have to have several reptiles to raise through their life and regularly take samples so they can determine the patterns exhibited at each stage of life. I think a good biomarker could be the telomere length as that shortens in length while aging in a good portion of species (one well-known animal whose telomeres never shorten is the lobster! That's why they can grow throughout their lives instead dieing from predation, disease, and not having enough energy to finish moulting before the process kills them.) While I know mostly about how this works in humans I would love to know if there are better biomarkers just for reptiles. Maybe we can identify what sequence of the genomes theyre gathering causes the shedding process to start and see if there is a possible measure there? Im excited to see where this goes
I feel like that would be really advanced technology bc the shed doesn’t exist the snakes entire life, as far as I know. And I’m also not sure if DNA itself contains information about age in snakes(or humans for that matter). But I would love to see that technology exist.
these techniques are all stuff thats super common in many biology labs, but the limitation is just the genetics. if there is a genetic basis for a trait, then there should be a way to identify them. knowing what primers are needed to amplify specific genes, what genes correspond to what phenotype, etc. once we know those, it should all be doable. im surprised the whole genomes of various snakes hasn't been sequenced yet.
With genome sequencing you could also potentially end up seeing certain genetic characteristics that result in "invisible" health issues that no one really knows about. (such as finding a genetic issues with the organs, or immune system, or tracking down the actual gene responsible for head wobble and seeing if every single spider actually has it, etc)
This is giving me throwbacks to genetics in collage, I was in the first year it was offered so we were the guinea pigs for how DNA sequencing would go. Genetics never really clicked for me but its definitely interesting to learn about.
Which Collage did you go to?
I've done something similar with e.coli cells in my biotech lab a few years back. It's cool to see where the technology could be applied in other fields.
That's really cool. Just asking, why would you need to spread the DNA of e.coli? I'm not specialized in that field whatsoever, and was just wondering what the purpose of that would be.
@@FurNixen I think we were mostly doing it to learn how to do the whole processes itself. I don't remember too much anymore since it's been like 6 years since then. I think e.coli was easy to grow and manipulate? I do remember we tried to add a strand of DNA into it to get the E.coli to glow(maybe just have a different color) after it ate a substance in the petri dish. The process used PCR to replicate the certain strand of DNA.
@@BeiyongError i am pretty sure what you where doing was cloning aka adding dna to a organism
The Green glow comes from a protein called GFP and to get it in ecoli (in the lab you usually use a harmless type of ecoli like bl21 or dh 5 alpha which you could basicly lick the petridish and nothing would happen) you play with probability: if you throw 1.000.000.000 dna particles on 500.000 ecolis the chance that some take it is pretty good.
But to get that amount of protein dna you have to pcr it first
And after the cloning you Pick part of random colonies of ecoli that probably now have the GFP (or other protein of interssed) and pcr them to have enough DNA to analyse it in a gel if the size of the protein matches and after that you usually sequenze it as well to make sure no mutations happend while the dna was multipied by ecoli. Thats more or less what you probably did
Edit: the reason one usually does this is to have a reliable Source (= the ecoli) to produce a huge amount of protein and then use it for other research
This is SO cool. I've sent sheds to them in the past, and I'm super excited to see how it's done!!
I'm surprised nothing was said for legless lizards. They are hard to sex, and if it can be done without a blood test, that would be awesome.
I was waiting for this topic to come up! I know Emily doesn’t know for sure the gender of the 2 she has
I was too, the whole video I was like "Emily ask about your legless lizards!" Lol
Birds too! Luckily there are tests for them
When I tell you I was excited for this video... This research is EXACTLY what I want to do. And seeing that I can actually make my passion a thing is just so cool. Thanks Emily and Ed for even more AMAZING content!!
Oooo!! With the morph tests, if they get them finished, you’d be able to tell the REAL hets of a snake that you got from a breeder or smthn
This isn't just groundbreaking for the reptile community but is also seriously useful for biology and genetics as a whole. Amazing stuff!
One of my high school electives allowed us to do a similar but simplified process of the DNA testing. As the guys were talking towards the beginning about the process, i was like “hey I got to do that!” I still have the giant test tubes that have the strawberry dna and my dna somewhere in my room😂
We did that just a couple of hours ago. It was fun.
I extracted corn dna with my dad in elementary school. I wish I still had the tube!
Damn. I'm so jealous, I've just studied it in theory. I don't have access to fancy stuff like that
I have listened to Ben on a pocast and he was very interesting! I have followed and shared and recommended RGI for a couple years now. They are so awesome! They are so needed!! LOOOOOOOOOVE these guys!
I LOVE corn snakes so I would love to see a morph DNA done on them.
Snakes are relatively easy to tell the sex of eventually. I would be interested if they could do something like that with blue tongue skinks. They are much harder to sex
In the video they say they’re working on BTS, but they also have it posted on their website.
I imagine snake sex determination sex testing is going to be much more useful for conservationists doing wild species estimates.
@@khills if they’re doing projected growth, definitely!
My blue tongue skink sexed himself by dropping sperm plugs all the time and in front of me which exposed the hemipenes. Still call him Fiona though lol
@@Fruityflootloops like Brad & Janet or even Rex!
I would love to work with these guys! I have a possible masters thesis idea to determine the gene that connect spider morphs with the neurological deficiencies.
I live in Virginia and dident know they were doing this type of research, its amazeing can't wait to see were it goes, could also be used to prevent pairing reptiles that are to closely related as well. like how some breeds are decended from a sing female excreta
Commenting for the algorithm. The whole reptile community needs to see this! Love what these guys are doing
Epic :D It'd be really cool to see what morphs some wild snakes/rescues would have cause we don't know and where certain morphs are more common.
Fascinating! It's crazy I started watching your videos almost 2 years ago when I was stuck at home at the beginning of the pandemic. I used to fear and hate snakes, now I just have a healthy respect for them 😅 But seriously I have learned so much and truly love learning about all these reptiles. My fave are lavender hognoses but I also love the tagues (prob spelled that wrong). Thank you for making informative and interesting videos about reptiles. Hopefully more people will be less fearful and more intrigued
I’m so excited!!!! I know exactly what they’re talking about. I’m a high school senior who has been in a STEM program all of high school and I have run gel electrophoresis MANY times and now I’m actually seeing it in real life!!!!
OH THIS IS SO COOL I don’t even own snakes but I have a passing interest in genetic test and snakes so I find this fascinating
Thank you for reminding me I needed to send in a shed for one of my breeding prospects! Money well spent, in my mind. We need more wonderful scientists contributing to things like this!
so this is what groundbreaking feels like!
I would love to work for a group like this! I got my Ph.D. in pigment genetics and feel like this would be up my alley. I've read some papers about snake pigment genetics which were fascinating
I wonder if this could be done with bird feathers? 🤔 They often have highly sought after mutations and sexing them is difficult without a DNA test anyway.
I'm not super knowledgeable about the makeup of bird feathers, but if they still maintain cells in the feathers it should be possible to extract the DNA from them. My guess that unless the feather also contains the root then probably not but that only if it works like human hair.
@@heavyarmormage I think the quill is the root?
@@ettinakitten5047 that sounds correct but again I don't claim to know much about bird anatomy lol. I'm just a biochemist who has done a lot of DNA extractions.
Yes, DNA tests can be done with bird feathers actually! It's one of the most commonly used sex determination tests with them :)
@@SnakeDiscovery I am your biggest fan even though I don't send fan mail I would like to see you in Delaware in person sometime and George money is not my name
I am sure that breeders will absolutely love this testing for morphs when it is complete. I have noticed when Emily has snake with a "possible het" for something, and the disapointed look on her face when she finds out after several breedings that the possible het isn't true. She gets all sad and we don't want Emily sad! I am sure even if the test cost a small amount of money, it would be worth it not to have to spend the time and effort raising up something only to find out after several breedings that they aren't a particular morph.Thank you Rare Genetics Inc for helping the reptile community!
Genetics and snakes are my favorite topics so this is definitely the video for me! ❤️
This is HUGE. Now if we find scales from dead snakes 8 million years ago, knowing what sex and potential morph they are could be massive for fossil research! I’m so excited this is happening and seems so successful!
You guys could test Stripy and his sisters to try and find out where the strip comes from and if his sisters have it or not
I’ve always been interested on how do you tell snakes gender but this is such a good way do it
I love how you promote and talk about companies you love and allow more people to know about them. Your so selfless and caring.
I did not understand a single word of all that sciencey talk but I definitely understood that it was really cool :3
I feel that
I thought this sounded familiar! People in a blue tongue skink group I was in were talking about this, and saying we should send in shed skin samples from our own blue tongues! It's cool to hear just how much of a difference this can make
Omg, I was seriously pondering if there were gender tests for snakes other than colubrids earlier today. It's like your psychic.
I was soooo excited when they mentioned Hudson Alpha! That's where I got my genetic testing done to diagnose my genetic disorder!
That's so cool! Technology has come so far. Who knows what else we can do!
This is SO COOL!! I can't wait until their morph testing is out for Ball Pythons. I'd love to see if my boys have anything more than what the breeder stated.
Love watching Emily geek out! You guys are so fun.
👀 the tarantula community/hobby needs this
I've sent in 3 sheds to be tested with them such a great thing for people who are not comfortable with doing other sexing methods themselves. Glad to see yall feature them and hopefully bring more business and awareness to what they are doing with the morph determination and other research. I can't wait to hopefully one day be able to figure out what morph my corn snake is.
I think it would also be a good way to also weed out any genetic disorders as well.
Always awesome getting notified of one of these videos. So informative!
This is legitimately so super awesome, and very exciting for the entire reptile hobby! These guys are super awesome for working hard on something so amazing :)
Surprised UC Davis doesn't have this, yet. They provide so many other animal genetic tests.
I did the DNA gels procedure today in AP Bio!!
What a cool coincidence!
I actually learned about the gel thing in school. Funny to see that school and snakes relate.
when these guys figure out how to ID morphs genetically through testing, they're going to be fricken RICH
Hi Snake Discovery! I’m so happy to see you all healthy and happy! I love watching your videos! Keep up the good work! 🥰😁💖
As a new reptile lover I would love an in depth video explaining snake genetics terms, like Het, and Super, etc
Check their past videos, they did at least one video on the topic, but it was a while ago.
Oh thank you! I found it!
It would be awesome to be able to tell one day if Stripey has/had a special morph or gene of any kind!
They would have to know what gene they were testing for first. Since if Stripey’s stripes are a morph, they are a unique, new morph, they would have to sequence a series of example snakes with that morph and a series of controls to isolate what that gene would be.
@@CCNorse I'm thinking they could sequence the entire genome and compare Stripey to normal types to see where there are unexpected differences. It would have to wait until after they have a good database of normal genomes, of course. But once they have enough controls, even just 1 striped snake's genome would show possible mutations (as well as a lot of unimportant things, but if they know enough about which genes control for pattern etc. it could be determined still!)
🤯 wowsers, very interesting and mind blowing, well done to Ben and Patrick, science has come a long way. Great video thanks 💖😁
Really interesting 🤔🤯 although watching at currently 230am (in the UK) my head is hurting lol
Me too, UK based and this is hurting my sleep deprived brain. Video is stil awesome and worth it, I may just have to watch it again when I'm more with it
Ok, this is amazing! I am so excited for what this will bring to the hobby and it is so fascinating that they can do all of this with DNA obtained from sheds. No blood draws or other things, just the sheds picked up out of the enclosure! I am headed for my biology degree and I love this so much!
I'm studying to be a biologist atm and PCR and Gel electrophoresis has been one of favorite things to learn about
This is AMAZING! I’d love to see these genetic breakthroughs. Really interesting stuff
This sounds amazing! I'm not a breeder or anything but I'm so psyched for the ease of these tests, it's much less stressful for the snake and it's a for sure answer that you can even show others if you sell! So great! And it's gonna be done by the end of the year? WOW
This is awesome! I’m a ball python breeder. I’ve sent multiple ball python sheds for testing and have more to send. This will be great not only for breeder and buyer confidence knowing morphs/hets, but also to help us understand the nature of genes and how some of them interact. This would completely change our understanding of reptile genetics. I’m so excited!
I also keep African house snakes, which for those who don’t know, have a NIGHTMARE taxonomy because so many of the species are so similar and from such close regions. Being able to test species/locale between B. fuliginosus, B. capensis, B. lineatus, etc. would be amazing.
I’m in school studying molecular biology and have been a huge fan of this channel for years now. It made my heart absolutely soar to see a video with two of my favorite things tied into a perfect package. 😭
I wonder if you could send in Stripey's shed skin and possibly those of his sisters. I remember the clutch and seeing that a lot of the hatchlings had those clear underbellies and one had a partial stripe like Stripey did which lead to a lot of people mentioning it in the comments. If they could possibly test for Genetics maybe you can have an answer to finally know whether Stripey's got something going on or not!
Fascinating! Thanks for bringing us this inside look at an innovative application of DNA testing for herps- really opening the door!
Loving the choice of a professor type hognose tee to go and hear about science-y stuff. 😁😂🐍
Also I wonder if snake discovery will be providing these guys shed skins for their projects?
These guys have come so far its crazy! They just announced the release of 30 more tests recently
This is cool to actually partially understand how this stuff actually works- been working in a research lab at my university and we work with mammal DNA, just been learning about sequencing and have done 3 PCR practice tests since I’ve been here (failed the first 2, but my 3rd went well!) So this is really neat to see! Thanks for the video Em & Ed!
This is really interesting! Thank you for sharing this information! It’s fascinating just how much you can tell from just a small piece of shed.
This is so amazing! I’ve been looking for breeders or vets in my area to accurately sex my colubrids and they are near impossible to come by. This is such an accessible way to get this information! Thank you guys for showing us this great resource. :)
dumerils dad here!! this is exciting news hearing about the project with the madagascar gang. also im located here in Virginia!
The best videos are when my work gets mixed with topics i love. So this is 10/10 for me.
Oh god, I have just traveled back to my high school Bio class.
There are mixed feelings rn😭
This is so cool, I think it is so interesting how much information you can get from a single scale. Keep up the good work!!
This would be amazing for leopard geckos as well. I also hope in the near future Crested gecko genetics will be more studied and figured out!
I love seeing snakes shed it’s the most coolest thing on the whole planet and thanks for putting a smile on my face
Emily looked so nervous in this one. You’re doing great Emily!!!
It's amazing to see how far things have progressed. I'm an old guy. I grew up in the 70's and 80's when herpers were few and far between... And not very well accepted by the general public... To see two professional scientists who are obviously herpers being interviewed by another herper wearing a Pokemon belt buckle makes me smile :-) To all three of you, keep up the good work! I discovered Rare Genetics a couple of years ago. I sent them a couple of corn snake sheds just to confirm my "eye ball" ID of sex. They were quick, and very affordable, and now I have no doubt about them. I highly recommend Rare Genetics.
I love how this is all done with the shed of a snake!
That is really neat that they can do that. My dad helps make the biological cabinet behind you. I have been to plant were they are made.
How did I not know this was in Va wow truly amazing
This is incredible! I would love to get my snakes genetics done but I have a feeling there’s going to be one hell of a wait list
OH MY GOSH SO COOL YOU CAME TO VA!! I LIVE THERE I WISH I CAN MEET U GUYSSSSS OMG
AAAAAaaaaaah, this is so exciting!!! This really IS a sea-change in terms of identification! It'll really cut down on unscrupulous sellers! I really hope the GoFundMe page takes off and they can get the money they need to do their work! I saw on the screenshot of the web page, it's only 16 dollars to get the M/F determination for one snake?? That's INSANELY LOW! For real! Big applause for sci-com, thank you for doing these visits, Emily and Ed! :D
"i have a PhD,
And a angry giant tortoise!"
Having been told 2 years into my Blue tongue's life that he "might" be a she by a vet I would have loved a test. My little one is continuing to get male pronouns for now but I would have loved to know (and to know for sure) much earlier in his life.
this is so cool to see! i just learned how to do pcr last semester to identify stream insects. it’s awesome how many ways pcr can be used
This is amazing. Just think of the number of unwanted clutches that won't be born while trying to prove out hets, making for less 'unwanted' snakes in the market. Or having two hets you really don't want to cross and not known until the babies are born.
These videos make my whole day ❤️
i’m so excited for this video! i love learning about genetics :)
Amazing video, amazing information!