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Molecular techniques have made it increasingly possible to make subtle changes to the composition and function of living organisms

Biology

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Molecular techniques have made it increasingly possible to make subtle changes to the composition and function of living organisms. When designing these systems, multiple experiments must be conducted to ensure the biological changes are occurring as desired. You are working on a team that is developing a genetically modified potato. The potato is designed to have modified starch synthesis that will allow the potato to retain less water, and therefore require less water during development. While this sounds complicated, your team believes that this can be attained as simply as modifying three amino acids within the sequence of the starch branching enzyme (SBE) (1,4?α?glucan: 1,4?α?glucan 6?glucosyl transferase). The overall experiment will include several steps including generating mutant DNA, inserting mutant DNA into the plant, growing the plants and confirming protein expression, and examining the starch in the mutant plants.

In terms of confirmation of the success of each one of those steps, several experiments will need to be completed. In short, your team must:

1. Sequence the genome of the mutated plant to ensure correct incorporation of the gene segment into the plant genome.
2. Confirm protein sequence to ensure all forms of protein in the plant contain required mutations.
3. Confirm the expression of the protein in the correct tissue of the plant.
4. Confirm enzymatic activity of the protein.
5. Confirm structural change to starch in the plant.

Describe the techniques you will need to utilize to perform the experiments 1-5. While you will not need to describe explicit reagents required to run each experiment, you should overview the basic idea of how the experiment will work, which controls would be appropriate, and how you will know whether the results indicate your experiment was successful. I would suggest formatting your paper in a series of five short sections, each with the following format:

• Experiment #:
• Null Hypothesis:
• Alternate Hypothesis:
• Technique utilized:
• Appropriate controls (internal/external/both):
• Expected results:
• Appropriate statistical analysis