Chapter 12, Problem 37P

The completely synthetic yeast chromosome Syn III contains a loxP site in the 3′ UTR of every gene that is potentially nonessential to yeast survival. As you will recall from Chapter 6, loxP sites are targets of site-specific recombination. The researchers who constructed Syn III included these loxP sites as a way to “scramble” the chromosome, meaning that parts of the chromosome could easily be deleted or rearranged. The goal of these investigations is to drive the evolution of Syn III so as to define a minimal genome that can support the life of this organism. Outline the experiment the researchers would do to scramble Syn III in order to define a minimal genome.