Which is NOT true of mobile genetic elements? Mobile genetic elements can alter the course of an organism's development and have played a role in the evolution of the body plans of multicellular organisms. Mobile genetic elements can destroy a gene's capacity to encode a useful protein but cannot alter a gene's expression pattern. Mobile genetic elements can rearrange neighboring DNA sequences in the host genome, generating novel genes. Mobile genetic elements can serve as targets of homologous recombination, resulting in DNA duplication and deletion. Mobile genetic elements have shaped the evolution of modern genomes, including our own.

Mobile genetic elements can destroy a gene's capacity to encode a useful protein but cannot alter a gene's expression pattern.

Explanation:

True: Mobile genetic elements can destroy a gene's capacity to encode a useful protein

False: cannot alter a gene's expression pattern.

Mobile genetic elements (Transposable elements) can alter gene regulation by changing chromatin structure, introducing novel promoters, novel splice sites or other post-transcriptional modifications. Mobile genetic elements that land in introns can become a exon or spliced into mRNA of the gene into which they have inserted, which can lead to introduction of stop codons into mRNA.