BISC219/F13: Assignment Series2 Complementation

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Complementation Assignment

Complementation analysis is an important and widely used genetic tool. We will use it to confirm and expand our knowledge about the gene mutation that is responsible for the phenotype abberation you are studying. You should find and read some general background information before you start writing this assignment. A good place to start is this Wikipedia article. An excellent scholarly article by Hawley and Gilliland can be found in Genetics, Vol. 174, 5-15, September 2006. Your homework assignment to show that you understand complementation and how you will use it in our Series 2 forward genetics project will be due at the beginning of lab next time.

Please write a 1-2 page summary describing complementation analysis as a genetic tool both generally and specifically related to your project. You will probably need to use and cite outside sources. Please use the journal Genetics as a model for in text and reference page citation style. You must paraphrase information from sources (no direct quoting in any work submitted for BISC219) and you must not cite Wikipedia or the lab wiki since they are secondary sources and not peer-reviewed. Use Wikipedia initially to learn more about your subject and, perhaps, to find appropriate primary sources to cite. Since you are using sources and citing them in-text, an appropriately formatted Literature Cited page (in journal Genetics format) is required as part of this assignment. You will probably notice that articles in Genetics rarely cite web-based sources, except for public data bases (such as Wormbase). It is certainly appropriate to learn about complementation from any reliable source but is most of it need not be cited. General information found in Wikipedia or in textbooks is considered common knowledge and does not need citation. "Common knowledge" does not mean "what the average person knows", but rather, it refers to information that is so generally accepted that it is not necessary to inform your reader who proposes this interpretation or line of thinking. Citations are used to give credit to investigators for their contributions to our general understanding of a particular topic to date. Information moves from broad to narrow and from old to new; therefore, it would be appropriate to find out the history of our basic understanding of complementation from a peer reviewed scholarly paper (such as the Genetics paper suggested here) and use and cite some of the scholarly sources found there (usually in the introduction section or discussion) as a way of giving credit to those integral to the discovery, understanding, and use of complementation analysis. If you think you have used a web-based source that must be cited and you can't find a model for how to format it among the model Genetics articles, here is a link to the Council of Science Educators guidelines for citing internet sources in CSE Name Year (NY) style. Scroll to the bottom and look for the NY format |

Using the templates provided here Media:Series 2 - Complementation.pdf, submit diagrams of the crosses you will set up for our complementation analysis from beginning to end including expected results when your mutation is allelic and non-allelic to a reference mutation.

Grading Rubric

Assignment Complementation Analysis 10 points

At or Above Standard Below Standard Possible


Narrative summary of complementation in general Constructed a complete, clear, concise, and accurate summary of what complementation is and how it is used as a genetic tool; Use appropriate sources and cited sources correctly in proper Genetics style Information is inaccurate or only partially inaccurate; Contains too much tangential information or is too simplified; Missing essential information; References not cited, not cited appropriately or in proper format (Genetics, Name/Year style). Omited Literature Cited page or formatted it incorrectly. 3 __/3
Narrative summary of complementation specifically related to Series 2 Forward Genetics Project
Constructed a clear, concise, accurate, and logically developed description of the role of complementation testing in our experimental approach to locating and characterizing a gene mutation responsible for a phenotypic alteration from wild type Essential information missing, inaccurate, partially accurate; Contains too much tangential information or is too simplified, Information isn't logically developed 3 __/3
Cross diagrams
Used templates provided to draw out accurate and clear predictions of crosses set up for complementation analysis and expected results when unknown mutation is allelic and non-allelic to reference mutations. Crosses missing, inaccurate, or only partially accurate. 4 __/4
Total 10 __/10

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