Gene Transcription in KO Mice

[JoeSus]

Hi,

I'm currently studying GABA receptor subunit expression in KO mice. My main questions though are general to receptor transcription/gene transcription in KO mice. Any help would be much appreciated as I don't know very much at all about the specifics of gene transcription. Although an exact answer would be fantastic, if anyone could point me in the direction of useful papers/textbooks that would be great.

My question is, what happens when during transcription if a specific gene has been knocked out? If it is a single subunit of a larger receptor, will transcription of the receptor be entirely abandoned or will replacement subunit genes be looked for?

For example, there are 6 possible alpha GABAA receptor subunits (the receptor contains 2 alpha, 2 beta and 1 other non-alpha/beta subunit. If one of these had been knocked out, would during transcription another alpha subunit be substituted in place of the knocked out subunit? If this is the case would alpha subunits located on the same chromosome be more likely to be transcribed in replacement than alpha subunits on other chromosomes?


Thank you for reading,
Joe

[mmorgan]

Originally Posted by JoeSus

Hi,

I'm currently studying GABA receptor subunit expression in KO mice. My main questions though are general to receptor transcription/gene transcription in KO mice. Any help would be much appreciated as I don't know very much at all about the specifics of gene transcription. Although an exact answer would be fantastic, if anyone could point me in the direction of useful papers/textbooks that would be great.

My question is, what happens when during transcription if a specific gene has been knocked out? If it is a single subunit of a larger receptor, will transcription of the receptor be entirely abandoned or will replacement subunit genes be looked for?

For example, there are 6 possible alpha GABAA receptor subunits (the receptor contains 2 alpha, 2 beta and 1 other non-alpha/beta subunit. If one of these had been knocked out, would during transcription another alpha subunit be substituted in place of the knocked out subunit? If this is the case would alpha subunits located on the same chromosome be more likely to be transcribed in replacement than alpha subunits on other chromosomes?


Thank you for reading,
Joe

You can't predict the answer to your question without knowing more about the molecular biology of the genes in question. It's certainly possible that there are feedback mechanisms that upregulate alternative subunits if one is missing but without doing an actual experiment (or digging through the literature) it's impossible to say anything.