Review Question - QID 215070

A geneticist is studying the etiology of a rare genetic disorder found in a cluster of patients. After performing fractionation and sequencing experiments to isolate the causative mutation in these patients, she finds that the mutation is located within a region of DNA that is expressed in the following manner: Ribosomal RNA and transfer RNA are produced in a continuous polycistronic manner with the affected gene and are immediately used in the production of the mutant protein. Furthermore, all of the involved transfer RNA subtypes are produced in equal quantities. The cluster of patients being studied most likely have which of the following disease manifestations?