#Question id: 15817

You and your lab partner have isolated 20 new mutant yeast strains that are defective in synthesis of threonine, an amino acid. These Thr- mutants do not grow on minimal medium, but they do grow on minimal medium supplemented with threonine. Ten of your Thr- mutants (numbered 1 through 10) were isolated in a strain of mating type a (MAT a). The other 10 Thrmutants (numbered 11 through 20) were isolated in a strain of mating type α (MAT α). You and your lab partner cross each of the MAT a strains to each of the MAT α strains, and you include crosses to the appropriate wild-type strains. Your experimental observations are shown in the table below, where (-) indicates diploids that did not grow on minimal medium and (+) indicates diploids that did grow on minimal medium

Based on these experiments, what is the minimum number of genes required for threonine synthesis?