Identifying the mutations depending on the forward or reverse genetics:
a. Forward genetics marks out heritable differences by their phenotypes and finds their location. The molecular analysis of the gene products follows forward genetics.
Reverse genetics marks the protein or Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and starts working with it. It works toward mutating the gene that encodes the protein and finds the phenotype of the mutated gene.
In this case, we know the proteins and want to determine the phenotypes associated with loss of function mutations in the genes that encoded them, so we will use reverse genetic approach to identify these mutations.
b. There are two approaches we may use to look for loss-of-function with phenotypes in one of these genes. One approach is done by direct mutations by which particular gene produces a specific phenotype. The second approach is to generate phenocopies of the mutant phenotypes. This is done by inactivating the gene product and not the gene.