A geneticist is working with a new bacteriophage called phage Y3 that infects E. coli. He has isolated eight mutant phages that fail to produce plaques when grown on E. coli strain K. To determine whether these mutations occur at the same functional gene, he simultaneously infects E. coli K with paired combination of the mutants and looks to see whether plaques are formed. He obtains the following results. (A plus sign means that plaques were formed on E. coll K; a minus sign means that no plaques were formed on E. coli K.) To how many functional genes (cistrons) do these mutations belong? 5 1 8 2 7 3 Solution Answer: Correct answer: 3 Reason: The geneticist has conducted the transformation experiment in which “trans” portion of the cis–trans test to determine the complementation between the different phage mutants infected with E. coli K cells. Finally, these cells were looked whether the plaques are generated in the plates. It can be seen in the above results table, in which plus sign means that plaques were formed due to complimentaion in 3 mutants (5, 6 & 8) have meticulously specific defects in the same functional so that on E. coli K; a minus sign means that no plaques. Therefore, it can be concluded that complementation can happen when the mutations of the different phages come together in the sample as part of transformation.