Recall that Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), a form of congenital blindness in humans, can be caused by homozygosity for recessive mutations in the RPE65 gene. Recently, a rare dominant mutation in RPE65 has been implicated as one cause of an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, which is characterized by retinal degeneration that Can progress to blindness. The dominant RPE65 mutation is a missense mutation causing amino acid 447 in the polypeptide to change from Asp to Glu. Little is known about the nature of the mutant protein. a. Do you think that the dominant allele is more likely a loss-of-function or a gain-of-function mutation? Explain. b. As described in this chapter, gene therapy for LCA has been at least partially successful. Do you think that the same kind of gene therapy can be used for patients with retinitis pigmentosa caused by the dominant mutant allele of RPE65? Explain.

Respuesta :

a. The primary mutation causing retinitis pigmentosa, which manifests as vision loss, is a loss-of-function mutation that prevents the REP65 protein from evolving into its functional form.

b. Because AAV vectors' expression declines with time and both recessive copies must be delivered simultaneously for the mutant phenotype to not be expressed, the same strategy could not be employed with dominant mutant alleles.

Homozygosity:

The condition of having two identical copies of a specific gene, one from each parent, is known as homozygosity. The reverse is heterozygous, which is when a person has two copies of a specific gene, one from each parent.

To learn more about homozygosity,

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