Variegation

[Lucanus cervus]

Hi,


Does somebody know how you can determine wether variegation is caused by transposon insertion or transposon excision?

It would be of great help

greetings,

Sam

[JackBean]

I would guess rather insertion. But theoretically, if you had embryo with inserted transposon and it got excised in part of cells, you could get it too... (but kind of reversed)

[magicsiew]

Insertion, transposable elements can regulate genes epigenetically, when inserted within or very close to them... Much example can be found on RNAi..

[Lucanus cervus]

My book (Introduction to genetic analysis, Griffiths et al,9E) says both can be the cause, and exactly in the way Jackbean says.

But our professor gave a list with possible questions for my genetics exam and one of the questions is:

"how can you determine wether a variegation is caused by a insertion or rather an excision"


I think I know sort of what she means but I can't put it into words

[JackBean]

so, what's your though?