In: Biology
1. You have sequenced the genomes of males of two fruitfly strains. When comparing the sequences of genes, you found that strain #1 has a gene that’s not present in strain #2. What would you need to do to identify the function of this novel gene?
randomly mutagenize the fly embryos of both strains |
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perform a forward genetic screen in both strains |
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use RNAi to silence the gene in strain #1 and observe the phenotype |
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fuse the gene in strain #1 with GFP and observe the embryo |
Here, the gene is absent in strain 2 and is present only in strain 1.
Randomly mutagenizing the flies will result in changes all over the genome and will not provide any information on the gene.
The forward genetic screen involves uncovering the genetic changes that bring about a particular phenotype. Here, we are interested to know the phenotype for a given genotype and hence forward genetic screen is not suitable.
RNAi or RNA Interference will result in the knocking down or suppressing the expression of the gene in strain 1. This will result in the suppression of the phenotype that the gene was performing in gene 1 and hence it will give an idea about the function of the gene.
Making the gene that is present in strain 1 with GFP will result in the expression of GFP whenever the gene 1 is expressed. Doing this in the embryo will result in GFP being produced in all the tissues that have the expression of this gene. Thus, this experiment will allow localizing the gene product. It will not provide any information on the gene function.
Hence, the correct option is C.