For this question, answer in AT MOST two sentences (no semi-colons allowed). Bec
ID: 176035 • Letter: F
Question
For this question, answer in AT MOST two sentences (no semi-colons allowed). Because sox9 is an essential gene, you make a conditional sox9 strain that knockouts sox9 in the somatic gonad in the presence of a drug. You mate this sox9 strain to a sox8 knockout strain (so the mouse is a sox8; sox9 double mutant). You then perform the following experiments: A. You give the drug to a pregnant female mouse, so that sox9 is knocked out in the somatic gonad of the embyros. What happens to the XY progeny? B. You give the drug to a 6 week male mouse. What happens to the mouse?Explanation / Answer
Since you are supposed to answer in just 2 scentences, I will write the answer in bold and explain below it.
A) The XY progeny will develop into female instead of male because SOX9 promotes development of male sex organs and it would get mutated in the XY progeny.
The consumption of the drug would mutate the female mouse's as well as the embryos. The developing embryo by default has a female sex organ development process which gets modified in the presence of SOX9 to male organ development process as SOX9 initiates a large number of genes in the somatic gonad cells like sertoli cells. So, absence of SOX9 would not be able to change the course of female organ development.
B) The mouse becomes sterile because in absence of SOX9 the sertoli cells start getting transdifferentiated to granulosa cells.
SOX9 is known to be important for adult testis maintenance also, and so, if it gets mutated in a 6-week old mouse, the mouse would become sterile. This happens because the sertoli cells loose function in absence of SOX9 and transdifferentiate to granulosa cells. Granulosa cells cannot nourish the sperm as sertoli cells do, and hence the mouse would not be able to produce sperm properly.
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