6. During normal development, C. elegans has a vulva (an egg-laying organ of the
ID: 218612 • Letter: 6
Question
6. During normal development, C. elegans has a vulva (an egg-laying organ of the worm). You observe that a lin-3 mutation causes C. elegans to develop as vulvaless animals. A let-60 mutation causes C. elegans to develop as multivulva animals (they have several egg-laying organs instead of just one). If let-60 acts downstream of lin-3 in a linear developmental pathway controling vulval development, a lin-3 let-60 double mutant should have which phenotype? a) Wildtype vulva (no mutation) b) Vulvaless c) MultivulvaExplanation / Answer
Ans-- Option [a] Wildtype vulva
Reason-- It is a synergistic mutation because the contribution from the two functionally related genes exceeds the expectations from the additive effects of the two mutations.
We do not know which gene is epistatic so can not be sure about Options [b] and [c]