Bio 383H intro p 1

Introduction

A mutant in its basic definition is a genetic variant that causes a phenotype that differs from what is usual for that species. Often, an approach that is used for identifying mutants is called forward genetics. In forward genetics, a gene function is identified by working from a mutant phenotype. However, in pot-genomic era studies, we often employ what is called “reverse genetics”. In reverse genetics, we start from a plant which is homozygous for a mutant allele of an unknown gene and then analyze that gene. We used our B. distachyon plants which were homozygous for a mutation in our unknown gene, analyzing the phenotype of our plant, to help hypothesize a function for the unknown gene.