Unidentified Gene Persuasive Essay

How do we know we know what each individual gene does? One way to investigate the function of a gene is to just remove the gene and analyze what happens to the organism. Let’s say we have a gene of unknown function in the human genome, an unidentified gene. First, compare it to other genes to see what similar sequences they have, if they code some similar sequences they might code for similar functions. However, if the gene the unidentified gene codes for something different we have seen before this approach might not be much help. Another way to investigate the function of a gene is to remove the gene and observe what happens to the organism. When the gene is removed from the organism’s genome the value and purpose of the gene could be decipher.
Well it is not possible to remove it easily or ethically properly. The next thing to decide is which model organism is appropriate to use. A model organism could be just any organism except human that could be researched in a lab. There many organisms to choose from but for these method scientists have decided that mice are the popular model to use. Reason being mice are mammals, 99% of similarity in genome to humans, are cheap, easy to raise and have a short generation time.

Deleting a gene or disrupting a gene function in a mouse is called conditional knockout mouse model. Conditional knockout mouse model is a refine strategy that has been developed to permit the inactivation of a gene of interest to a specific site, an organ or developmental stage. Having the ability to manipulate a specific gene at a certain time or tissue provides knowledge of the gene function as well as animal development mechanism. Making a knockout mouse is very complex but here is an overview of the process but of course there is different ways to do