Understanding Knockouts - GRE Subject Test: Biology

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Question

Which of the following is not a methodology to obtain either transient or stable knockout/ knockdown of a gene?

Answer

Homologous recombination and Crispr-Cas9 create stable gene knockouts whereas shRNA and morpholino interference transiently knockdown a gene of interest. The GAL4-UAS system acutally is used to overexpress a gene of interest. By using a cell type specifc promoter, researchers are able to overexpress a specific protein in a desired cell type in a whole organism.

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Question

Genetically altering an animal to reduce the expression of a gene of interest can be a labor intensive process that does not necessarily produce complete loss of a gene. A genetic null is an animal in which the gene has been completely (or nearly completely) excised and as such, no protein is produced. A genetic hypomorph is an animal in which only part of a gene has been deleted and as such, a lower amount of protein or a dysfunctional protein is produced, but it is still there. Hypomorphs can be close to null, perhaps only retaining 5-10% of normal function, or they can be close to wild-type, retaining 80-90% of gene function and having mild mutant phenotypes.

You are studying Gene H, a gene that regulates head size, and the more Gene H is expressed, the larger the organism's head is. You have one animal that is nullfor Gene H, and one that is a hypomorphfor Gene H. You compare the head sizes of these animals. Which of the following results is least likelyto be true from your experiment? You can assume that a wild-type animal will have the largest head size of the three.

Answer

The only result that would be very unlikely is the one in which the null has a larger head size than the hypomorph. All of the other cases could be true since the nature of a hypomorph is often hard to ascertain, but given that more protein = bigger head, a true genetic null would have the least amount of protein (i.e. no protein) and represents the absolute smallest a head can get.

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