What is a homeotic mutant?
a. An individual with a structure located in the wrong place
b. An individual with an abnormal head-to-tail axis
c. An individual that is missing segments
d. An individual with double the normal number of structures

Question

What is a homeotic mutant?

a. An individual with a structure located in the wrong place

b. An individual with an abnormal head-to-tail axis

c. An individual that is missing segments

d. An individual with double the normal number of structures

Accepted Answer

Hi everyone. Let's look at our next problem here. It says A fly can grow a leg on its head and 10 eye on its mouth or sports a double set of wings due to, well these are pretty big mutations having to do with actual switching of bodily structures. And we think about bodily structures. We're gonna think about the phrase home idiotic or the term homoerotic homoerotic genes. Our genes involved our genes central to the development of anatomical structures. So if we're talking about mutations that cause complete uh swap of mix up of body parts, we're looking at mutations in these homoerotic genes. So when we look over our answer choices we see that Choice B is home idiotic mutation and that's what we'll be looking at here. But let's just go through our other answer choices. Um Choice A says point mutations. A point mutation would just be a single base pair being wrong. Uh Something like that is not likely to lead to actual swaps of body parts. So choice A. Is not our answer choice C. Is frame shift mutation. So while point mutation is a single base a frame shift mutation is an insertion or deletion of basis such that you throw off the cotton since your code owns our three base pairs. If you delete one or add one, every amino acid coded for after that may be changed because you've shifted the whole thing. I mean thrown off those three base pair groupings so that can lead to big problems obviously. But again, since we're talking about entire swaps of bodily structures. We're looking at those homoerotic genes. So it's not choice C frame shift mutations and finally, the mismatch mutations. This has to do with mutations in genes involved in correcting errors in DNA replication cells that have mutations in these genes accumulate a lot of mutations since they don't have this uh error, correcting function and that can lead to the development of cancers. So definitely causes problems. But not the problems that we're looking at in this problem. So not choice D. So again, a fly can grow leg on its head, antenna in its mouth or spots sports a double set of wings due to choice be homoerotic mutation. See you in the next video.

What is a homeotic mutant?
a. An individual with a structure located in the wrong place
b. An individual with an abnormal head-to-tail axis
c. An individual that is missing segments
d. An individual with double the normal number of structures

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Homeotic Genes

Mutations and Developmental Biology

Phenotypic Expression