koi patterns "set" in the egg?

[luke frisbee]

These thoughts are not to be assumed to be correct...if you do decide to discuss the concept with friends be sure to preface that this is just my thoughts.

First consider that the sex of loggerhead sea turtles is determined while in the egg. the temperature of the egg determines the gender. The further up the beach, away from the cooling effects of the water or perhaps the dune vegetation and therefore Down the beach the eggs are laid will therefore determine the gender of those eggs. and the health of the Female sea turtle is thought to determine how far up the beach she will crawl before turning around and depositing her eggs. the general health of the loggerhead females will decide the ratio of males/females....
So let's consider this in relation to koi...


I believe it was brett Rowley that nce said over on Koivet three years ago that even if a GC was cloned that the pattern would be different than that of the GC. i guess it had been done as brett is one of a very few that i trust to speak from a scientific basis. He was wrong...once, but that was about koi eating koi. I've never caught him in a half-truth either before or after.
So what would make genetically identical animals different? And I mean really different. THIS IS NOT FACT JUST WHAT I THINK.............
1. Each adult koi can throw 10's of thousands if not 100's of thousands of spawn each year...Species survival is dependent that the individual replaces itself by the end of its lifetime. there are different strategies that have evolved....humans invest huge amounts of energy in a few offspring...koi invest very little energy in any one offspring but they have millions of offspring within a lifetime. human offspring are very similar to the parents..if the parent succeeds under the current environment then the offspring are very likely to succeed.
A Koi/carp strategy is to have as much genetic ariation as is reasonable so that at least ONE of thier offspring survives out od several spawnings. Inherent within a koi is a vast Genotype underneath the phenotype. This in and of itself provides variety in the spawn. Also within a Carp's strategy is that the genes get scrambled when gametes are made, much more so than with animals that have small numbers of offspring...and finally do to nothing in this segment explaining why cloned koi do not have the exact pattern of theiir single parent...I believe that the environment an egg is maintained within while it matures will set a koi's pattern.
Pattern change within the egg is actually the BEST place for it to occur, the relationship that a koi's PATTERN AND COLOR has with the environment will have a profound effect on a koi/carp's ability to avoid predation.
Factors that could set the color and pattern while within the egg...
pH
temperature
turbidity
substrate
sunshine
current
wave action
proximity to other eggs
surface texture the egg is attached to
(many others)
While some have a corelation that could understandable shift the pattern and color to one that might decrease the chances of a koi/carp being seen by a predator, Any change in color and pattern would increase the chances that ONE of the fry would achieve adulthood.
And while the mechanism to change the patterns and colors of carp/koi would take up considerable room on a DNA strand the reactivity of the DNA to its environment would take up almost none and provide infinite variations.

it could also be that a variation/abnormality of this feature might be a reason we get the pleasure we do from these fish.


once again...these are just thoughts...not facts...

[111whalen]

You know, if someone figured out the way to get more females, transfer color genes, etc. it would have a profound effect. What would happen to the price of koi? What would the fish at the zoo (or in the $15 dollar tank) look like. It is fascinating to think of the possibilities. I would bet that may breeders spend time on this concept.

The Isreal koi guys have cloned fish but alas they do not look like the parents. Any one know who else is attempting to get do this?

[carolyn swanson]

A while ago, there was an article/posting or something bemoaning the fact that a pesticide or other pollutant found in Japanese rivers that changes the sex of baby fish to female. I thought at the time that the scientific crew would be all over this, but I haven't heard anything. Just think what you could do with this "magic potion."

[bekko]

Its not hard to change a batch to fish to all female. Use an estrogen-like hormone dip of the appropriate strength and duration very early in life. Its done with other types of fish.

-steveho

[PapaBear]

I think Lukes query is pretty interesting. The fact that the Koi genome is flexible enough to produce variety even from cloned offspring says something very unique about how and why they develop the way they do.
Environmental factors inutero (health, diet, water, etc...) of the host, be it a female parent or a petri dish must influence pattern and presumably skeletal structure as well. How well would a parent set renowned for producing GC quality offspring do if subjected to a mediocre environment and feed regimin during a single spawning season? Would they produce substandard fry even if the fry where immediately moved to an idealized environment? I would think it likely that they would.
Some of the questions he raises could help to explain why American bred Koi of GC parentage don't turn out as well as their bloodline would tend to imply. Could the different environmental factors be a major contributor even before birth?

[kingkong]

Genetic polymorphism in carp I would guess is highly variable. Chromosomal alterations may occur either spontaneously or chemical and physical agents may induce them. The only exact duplicate that I am aware of would be the off-spring of an animal growing from an egg or eggs that split after fertilization.

[luke frisbee]

king kong I am suggesting that even in that case the patterns would differ

[kingkong]

That would be interesting to see if monozygotic twins, if the fish eggs can slit, would to be identical koi as seen in humans and armadillos. Somewhere I read oxygen deprevation can induce monozygotic twinning in fish.

[luke frisbee]

I ain't talking about "fish" I am talking about carp/koi.
the only way i can explain that cloned fish don't have the same pattern is to theorize that the color and pattern are set/determined in the egg....
In the situation you are talking about the pattern could somehow be set in the first minutes after being expelled from the female. BUT I seriously doubt it. If koi twins were identical I would believe what I have thought is not how pattern and color are set.

I also believe that different colors are set at different times ....look at the Checkerboard pattern that is a characteristic of sumi in Showa,,,and compare that to hi patterns...i never see a checkerboard hi pattern...not that I can remember. There might be a pic out there. But his pattern must be set at a different time ( this adds credence to the color cells developing in different layers).

[elunned]

Breeders have a very different perspective than hobbyists on the qualities that are important in oyagoi. Pattern is not where koi appreciation should start.

The different patterns in koi are from different mutations that occured in different locations at diiferent points in time. Sanke are fundamentaly different than showa. That is probably why sanki sumi is different than traditional showa sumi in appearance, not just placement - each was a unique change in the genome, possibly at a different location on the chromosome. I suspect that different reds in kohaku are the result of interactions between different genes. The development of certain patterns and colors are historically linked (and possibly located on the same chromosome in some instances), but by interbreeding, those traditional linkages can be disrupted and new genes from other lineages introduced. (Crossover is a type of mutation that occurs whenchromosome line up in their pairs during cell division and DNA duplication - sometimes parts of the arms swap. It is a numbers game that used to be used to map how close two genes were to each other - the farther apart, the higher the probability of crossover, the closer the two genes, the less likely they would get separated.)

I like JR's way of looking at koi varieties and patterns - and I suspect it is a reflection of the genetics. Pattern families can be divided into dorsal patterns (sanke, kohaku) wrapping patterns (showa, utsuri) and lateral patterns (asagi/shusui and kumonryu).

Our understanding of genetics has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. FWIW, most biologists no longer believe in the notion "one gene - one protein" though that is sometimes still the easiest way to disuss mutations. The more we learn and the more genetic code we decipher, the more complex the picture becomes. Anyway - I've discussed cloning before, and why cloning for pattern cannot work. Remeber that every single cell in the koi carries the same genetic code. (More or less - mutations will happen in a large enough population of cells, and an adult koi has enough cells that there will be some mutations.) The cells that produce sumi have the same genes as the cells that produce beni - or those that produce no pigment. Skin cells carry the same genetic info as muscle cells, or cells in the nervous system. As an embryo develops, position and neighbouring cells guide many of the decisions about how individual cells specialize. Pattern is much more random when it comes to individual cells and where the "ground zero" for the patch of red or black starts. Twin dalmations don't have their spots in the same place, twin humans don't have freckles in the same spots. They should have the same pattern tendencies (red head, black pants, similar kiwa and sashi) plus similar skin quality, conformation, bone structure and growth rate as well as the timetable on pattern development as long as diet and environment are identical - but patterned clones are NOT mirror images.