Discussion:
Mutational Genetics
A botanist interested in the chemical reactions whereby plants capture light energy from the sun decided to dissect this process genetically. She decided that leaf fluorescence would be a useful mutant phenotype to select because it would show something wrong with the process whereby electrons are transferred from chlorophyll. Therefore four fluorescent (fl) mutants were obtained in the plant Arabidopsis after mutagenesis. All were found to be recessive in the simple Mendelian manner. Homozygous stocks of the mutants were intercrossed, and the F1s were testcrossed each to a strain that was homozygous recessive for all the genesinvolved in that cross. The results are shown in the table below.
Please see the attached word document for the table
a. How many genes are represented by these mutants?
b. What can you deduce about the chromosomal location of the genes?
c. Use your own gene symbols to explain the F1 and testcross results.