Developmental Biology Please answer in detail. Suppose you were really intereste

Question

Developmental Biology

Please answer in detail.

Suppose you were really interested in understanding whether your favorite gene, Wolverine, is an imprinted gene. Wolverine, in mammals, is thought to control the specification of ectodermal cells that eventually give rise to hair and finger nails. To test this hypothesis, you decide to directly inject a female pronucleus from one oocyte into another oocyte to make a diploid oocyte. Then, you activate the egg with ethanol and wait to see if development occurs normally.

Is this a good experiment for testing whether Wolverine is an imprinted gene? Why or why not? Explain the phenotypes you expect to see which would support your argument.

Explanation / Answer

Imprinted genes are the genes whose expression depends on the parent that contributed them. In contrast to the conventional rule of inheritance i.e. both alleles of the heterozygote are equally expressed, these genes are expressed in a parent of origin specific manner. So if we say that the allele inherited from the father is imprinted, this means that it is silenced and the allele from the mother is expressing itself and vice versa.

Genetic imprinting is also considered a barrier for restricting parthenogenesis in mammals. However many recent studies have generated mice by parthenogenesis using two female haploid genomes. The Success rates and viability of parthenogenetic embryos though is organism dependent.

In the given question a female pronucleus of one oocyte is directly injected into another oocyte to make a diploid oocyte followed by ethanol activation to monitor development.

So we can say that yes it is a good experiment for testing whether Wolverine is an imprinted gene or not.

If it is an imprinted gene the resulting parthenotes will be associated with improper development of hair and finger nails and hence with the help of it we can analyze the possible role of Wolverine by comparing them with fertilized embryos.

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