Reference no: EM133328483

Instructions

You are genetically engineering plants using a common gene-editing technique. You want your new plants to contain more carotenoids and as such, absorb more light from the sun and produce more oxygen. You need to confirm the mutation at the DNA (gene name: DXR), RNA (transcript name: dxr), Protein (protein name: Dxr), Enzyme (enzyme name: Dxr), and tissue expression levels (DXR is expressed in an organelle found in the leaf). For simplicity, the unmodified native plant and any products or extracts from it will just be called wild type (Wt). Your genetic engineering results in seeds that sprout into seedlings, and you start the process of characterizing your product. Simplified example results are provided on the linked file below.

Your tasks are as follows:

1. For each experiment, provide a synopsis describing the results and interpreting them in terms of the statistical analysis. If the experiment needs to be repeated or modified, 
2. Think about all of the results together. Does this product do what you hoped? Are totally different experiments requirement?  Interpret the results in terms of the overall goal of the project.

Experiment 1: Genotyping of plants for presence of DXR mutants. For simplicity, this data is presented as the number of plants with and without the mutation. 

Experiment 2: DXR positive plants were allowed to mature and RNA was collected from mature plant plastids. Two possible RNA variants are found: dxr and dxr_short. It is unclear whether these transcripts differ in function at this time. No further statistical analysis was performed at this time. 

Experiment 3: Dxr protein was measured in all DXR positive plants. Protein mass was analyzed in terms of the predicted mass of the amino acids encoded in the RNA. This data was sorted into groups dependent on whether the plant expressed the full or shorted dxr transcript.