Chapter 18, Problem 2P

Mice are usually gray, but a mouse geneticist has a pure-breeding white-furred strain that is homozygous for a recessive mutation. Molecular analysis shows that the mutation, represented by an asterisk in the following diagram, is a missense mutation in an exon common to three alternative splice forms of a gene expressed in hair follicles.

 

a.	Suggest an experimental approach using transgenic animals that you might employ to determine which splice form(s), when mutant, cause the white fur phenotype.
b.	Diagram the gene construct(s) you would create for your experiment.
c.	A potential problem with this approach concerns the amounts of mRNA that might be transcribed from the transgenes. Explain.