Chapter 5 Flashcards
What factors are important when trying to predict phenotype?
Dominant/recessive reslationship of alleles
Gene interactions affecting the expression of a single trait
Roles that sex and environment play
What are the four rules do genes following the mendelian inheritance pattern conform to?
- The expresson of the genes in the offspring directly influences their traits
- Except in mutations, genes are passed unaltered from generation to generation
- Genes obey Mendel’s law of segregation
- Follow independent assortment.
What’s a Maternal Effect?
An inheritance pattern for certain nuclear genes in which the genotype of the mother directly determines the phenotypic traits of her offspring.
Maternal effect was first studies by who and when?
Arthur Boycott
1920s
What was Arthur Boycott’s Experiment?
He began with two different true-breeding strains of snails with shells or internal organs being dextral (right-handed) or sinistral (left-handed) morphology. He performed a reciprocal cross and found the offspring always followed the females morphology.
Explain why all of the offspring in the F2 generation are dextral even though some of them are dd?
The offspring are all dextral because all of the F1 mothers are Dd, and the genotype of the mother determines the phenotype of the offspring.
Who explained the unusual results found by Boycott?
Alfred Sturtevant
What did Alfred Sturtevant suggest as the reason for Boycott’s results?
He suggested that snail coiling is due to a maternal effect gene that exists as a dextral or sinistral allele.
At the molecular and cellular level, how can the non-mendelian inheritance pattern of maternal effect genes be explained?
Based on the process of oogenesis in female animals. As an animal oocyte matures, many surrounding maternal cells called nurse cells provide the oocyte with nutrients and other materials.
Depending on the outcome of meiosis, the haploid oocyte may receive the D allele or the d allele. However, The surrounding nurse cells, have both and are then transported into the oocyte. Theses gene products persist after the egg has been fertilized and begins embryonic development. Thus the genotype of the mother due to the nurse cells influence the early development stages of the embryo.
If a mother is heterozygous, Dd, which gene products will the oocyte receive?
The egg cell will receive both D and d gene products.
Why is the sperm’s genotype irrelevant when dealing with the maternal effect?
Because the expression of the sperm’s gene would occur to late in the egg cells development.
Maternal effect genes encode proteins that are important in what?
The early steps of embryogenesis.
The accumulation of maternal gene products in the oocyte allows what?
Embryogenesis to proceed quickly after fertilization.
Maternal effect genes often play a role in what?
Cell division, cleavage pattern, and body axis orientation.
Defective alleles in maternal effect genes tend to have a dramatic effect on what?
The phenotype of the individual, altering major features of morphology, often with dire consequences.
A female that coils to the left has offspring that coil to the right. What are the genotypes of the mother of these offspring and the maternal grandmother, respectively?
a. dd, DD
b. Dd, Dd
c. dd, Dd
d. Dd, dd
d. Dd, dd
What is the molecular explanation for maternal effect?
a. the father’s gene is silenced at fertilization
b. During oogenesis, nurse cells transfer gene products to the oocyte.
c. the gene products from nurse cells are needed during the very early stages of development
d. both b and c are correct.
d. both b and c are correct.
What is Epigenetic Inheritance?
is a pattern in which a modification occurs to a nuclear gene or chromosome that alters gene expression, but is not permanent over the course of many generations.
Epigenetic inheritance patterns are the results of what?
DNA and chromosomal modifications that occur during oogenesis, spermatogenesis, or early stages of embryogenesis.
Once initiated, epigenetic changes alter the expression of what?
Particular genes in a way that may be fixed during an individual’s lifetime.
Do epigenetic modifications change the DNA sequence?
No
What is Dosage Compensation?
The phenomenon that in species with sex chromosomes, one of the sex chromosomes is altered so that males and females have similar levels of gene expression, even though they do not contain the same complement of sex chromosomes.
Who coined the term Dosage Compensation and when?
Hermann Muller
1932
How does dosage compensation occur by female mammals?
Female mammals use the process of X-chromosome inactivation (XCI)
What is X-Chromosome inactivation?
A process in which mammals equalize the expression of x-linked genes by randomly turning off one x chromosome in the somatic cells of females.
How do Drosphilia males accomplish dosage compensation?
Doubling the expression of most X-linked genes.
Do birds use dosage compensation?
No, many Z-linked genes do not use dosage-compensation, though a rare few do.
Mary Lyon, proposed that dosage compensation in mammals occurs by what?
Inactivation of a single X chromosome in females.
What studies provided evidence to Mary Lyon and Liane Russell’s proposals?
Cytoological studies.
Murray Barr and Ewart Bertram identified what?
A highly condensed structure in the interphase nuclei of somatic cells in female cats that was not found in male cats. This was known as the barr body.
What is the barr body?
A structure in the interphase nuclei of somatic cells of female mammals that is a highly condensed X chromosome.
Why is the Barr body more brightly staining in a cell nucleus than the other chromosomes?
It is very compact
Lyon suggested that both the Barr body and the calico pattern are the result of what?
X-chromosome inactivation in the cells of female mammals.
What is another name for X-chromosome inactivation?
The Lyon Hypothesis.
How does X-chromosome inactivation occur?
Intially both x chromosomes are active. However, at an early stage of embryonic development, on of the two x chromosomes is randomly inactivated in each somatic cell and becomes a barr body.
So as the cells multiply there will be patches of white and black fur because cells will have the inactive black cells or the inactive white cells.
At which stage of development does XCI initially occur?
During embryonic development.
What is the X-inactivation center?
A site on the x chromosome that appears to play a critical role in X-chromosome inactivation.
What happens if a female is missing its Xic due to a chromosome mutation?
A cell counts only one Xic and X-chromosome inactivation does not occur. Having two active x chromosome is a lethal condition for a human female embryo.
What is the function of the Tsix gene?
It is involved in choosing the x chromosome that is not inactivated.
What does Xist stand for?
X-inactive specific transcript.
What is Xist?
A gene required for compaction of the x chromosome into a barr body.
What are the three phases of XCI?
Initiation
Spreading
Maintenance
When does initiation occur in XCI?
During embryonic development
What happens during initiation in XCI?
One of the X chromosomes remains active, and the other is chosen to be inactivated.
Which of the XCI phases occurs in an adult female?
Only the maintenance phase
What happens during the spreading phase of XCI?
The chosen x chromosome is inactivated, involving the expression of the Xist gene.
The Xist RNA coats the inactivated x chromosome and recruits proteins that promote compaction.
Compaction inovlves DNA methylation and modification of histone proteins.
It is called the spreading phase because inactivation begins at the Xic and spreads in both directions along the x chromosome.
What occurs during maintenance?
The inactivated x chromosome is maintaned as a Barr body during future cell divisions.
In humans, up to __________ of x-linked genes may escape inactivation?
1/4
The genes that escape inactivation are often what?
Pseudoautosomal genes found on the x and y chromosomes
Why is dosage compensation not necessary for x-linked pseudoautosomal genes?
Because they are located on both the x and y chromosomes.
How are genes on the Barr body expressed, if they are supposed to be silenced?
The genes may be found in localized regions where the chromatin is less tightly packed and able to be transcribed.