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BIO 47 PROBLEM SET #3 2009

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DUE FRIDAY, October 2 BY 1:00 PM
PLACE HARD COPY IN DROP BOX OUTSIDE BMC 112 B,C

(1) (20 points) You are a mouse geneticist working in a large mouse facility which has
obtained or generated thousands of inbred lines over many years. Late one night while
working in the lab, you notice mice in one particular cage swaying back and forth and
generally rocking out to the new Pearl Jam album you are blasting. You turn the music
off, they return to normal. You turn the music back on- they go crazy! None of the mice
in other cages even seem to notice. You take the cage with the musically-inclined mice
down to the main facility, along with your boom box, and test your observation again.
You find that out of thousands of cages, there are a small number harboring similarly
behaving animals.
Suspecting there may be a genetic component, you want to determine how many
genes are involved in this trait (you call, rockout). Initial crosses to wild type animals
reveal F1 progeny that are all wild type with respect to Pearl Jam. You cross 6 lines to
each other and determine whether the hybrids are normal (+) or rockout (-) when exposed
to tunes.

A)(14 pts) How many complementation groups are revealed by this data? Which
mutations are found within which complementation groups?

Mutants
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 - + + + + -
Mutants 2 + - + - + +
3 + + - + - +
4 + - + - + +
5 + + - + - +
6 - + + + + -

Two additional mutations were found, which upon mating with the other mutants,
gave the following results:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
7 - + - + - - - -
8 - - + - + - - -

B) (6 pts) How can you explain these additional data? Draw a map if possible.

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2) (20 points)

A): 8 pts
Complete the diagram at the
right so that it represents a
normal meiosis.

Label the point at which

segregation occurs.

B: 6 pts. C. 6 pts.
Complete this partial diagram so that it Complete this partial diagram so that it
illustrates non-disjunction in meiosis I. illustrates non-disjunction in meiosis II.

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(3) (20 points) You isolate pure breeding mutants of a daylily (Hemerocallis) plant that
normally produce red flowers. Your recessive mutants fall into four classes, with white,
pink, purple and orange flowers. Assume that the colors represent the accumulation of
different colored intermediates in the mutants along the pathway to red color. You cross
your mutants to each other and score the hybrid progeny for red or non-red flower color.

TABLE 1 Complementation Test

(+ = RED, - = not RED).
Mutants
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 - + + - + + + + +
2 + - + + + + - + -
Mutants 3 + + - + + + + + +
4 - + + - + + + + +
5 + + + + - + + + -
6 + + + + + - + + +
7 + - + + + + - + -
8 + + + + + + + - -
9 + - + + - + - - -

a) (8 pts.) How many different genes are there? Indicate which mutants correspond to
which genes?

b) (4pts) Which mutant(s) behave like large deletions? With these deletion mutations,
indicate which complementation groups are covered by the deletion.

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You then are given purebred double mutant plants (constructed by Mendel himself) and
are told the flower color for these double mutant combinations. The table also indicates
the single mutant homozygous phenotype along the diagonal (bold underlined letters).

TABLE 2 Double Mutant interactions

(K=Pink,O=orange, P=Purple, W=White).
Mutant 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 O P O O O W P W W
2 P P P P W P W W
Mutant 1 3 K O K W P W W
4 O O W P W W
5 K W P W W
6 W W W W
7 P W W
8 W W
9 W

c) (8 pts.) From looking at the mutant interactions, draw the pathway for the order of the
synthesis of the various intermediate colors and indicate where mutations affect steps of
the pathway.

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(4) (20 points)

You obtain mice with a bone defect that confers a twisted body plan. Nevertheless, the
twisted animals are fertile and will mate. You mate twisted and normal mice together and
obtain progeny with phenotypes in the ratio:

Twisted 53
Normal 49

A) (5pts) How do you explain these results?

From the progeny above, you take some of the twisted mice and cross them to each other.
From this cross you recover:

Twisted 106
Normal 54

B) (10 pts) Assuming this is a genetic phenomenon, explain it.

C) (5pts) Is the twisted mutant gain-of-function, loss-of-function or potentially both?

Explain.

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(5) (20 points) You are interested in complex molecular assembly pathways. No,
really! You obtain a new series of bacteriophage mutations that lead to the production of
defective phage. Whereas normal phage will infect a lawn of growing E. coli and make a
plaque (a small circle of cell death), the mutants are all incapable of making a productive
infection and thus, a plaque. Nevertheless you know that infecting E.coli with many
phage can result in multiple infections/cell. You reason that if you infect two phage types
carrying blocks at different stages of phage production, they may be able to rescue the
pathway and generate phage packaged with mutant DNA. You obtain a series of
mutations known to affect phage growth and that accumulate known intermediates. You
co-infect the known mutants with your unknown mutants and check to see if the
combination produces plaques. Assume no recombination occurs between phage in these
conditions. In addition, you check to make sure that your original mutant phage DNA is
packed into the phage produced by molecular techniques (don’t worry about the details).
You enter the results in the following table with a + for plaque formation and recovery of
your defective phage in the phage particles. You enter – for no plaques.

The known mutants produce the following intermediate stages: C=collar, H= head,
T=tails, B=body, G=ghost and P= wild type (WT) phage.

Known mutants (or WT)

G C B P H T
1 + - - + - -
2 + + + + - -
New Mutants 3 + - - + + -
4 - - - + - -
5 + - + + - -
6 + - + + - +

A) What is the pathway and where do the mutants block phage production?

B) What accumulates in mutant 1? …5? …?6