To learn more about the function of a gene, researchers can observe what happens when the gene is inactivated or “knocked out,” by creating genetically engineered knockout animals. Knockout mice have been particularly useful as models for human diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes.

A complementation test is a simple cross to identify whether the two mutations are located on the same gene or different genes. It was first performed by Edward Lewis in the 1940s while working on fruit flies. He developed the test to identify the location and arrangement of different mutations on chromosomes.
Organisms heterozygous for different mutations are crossed pairwise in all combinations. If present on different genes, the mutations can complement each other by providing the missing...

In statistics, the term independence means that one can directly obtain the probability of any event involving both variables by multiplying their individual probabilities. Tests of independence are chi-square tests involving the use of a contingency table of observed (data) values.
The test statistic for a test of independence is similar to that of a goodness-of-fit test: