Question

a scientist who inserted a plant gee into a human chromosomes wan not ableto detect any transcription from the plan gene. propose an explination and experiment to test your hypothesis?

Answer 1

Ans-- One possible reason for this could be that there are no transferRNAs [ tRNA] in the animal cell that can transfer the required amino acid encoded by the mRNA that carried the information from the plant gene. We know that a particular tRNA can transfer only one type of amino acid.

A transgenic organism is produced by introducing a foreign gene into an organism by laboratory techniques. The gene has to be introduced at the embryonic stage so that it can be assimilated by the genetic material [ chromosomes] of the embryo and subsequently can be expressed in all the tissues.

The plant gene will be introduced into the human embryo by microinjection of the cloned gene into the pronucleus of the fertilised ovum. The resulting embryo will carry the introduced gene in all the subsequent cells.

When the baby is born on completion of the gestation period , it does not carry any expression of the plant gene.

This proves the hypothesis that plant genes will not be transcribed in human cells and hence, will not be able to express itself.