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Article number: 48 NEWS AND VIEWS Systematic genetics swims forward elegantly (2006)
BibTeX
@MISC{Suzuki06articlenumber:,
author = {Yo Suzuki and Frederick P Roth},
title = {Article number: 48 NEWS AND VIEWS Systematic genetics swims forward elegantly},
year = {2006}
}
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Abstract
Sometimes when two (or more) genes are perturbed simultaneously, the organism exhibits a surprising property. This property may be a phenotype—either qualitative or quantitative—or the penetrance of a phenotype. This phenomenon, called genetic interaction, suggests that the interacting genes have related functions. Genetic interactions have shaped our understanding of almost every known biological pathway (see Lu and Horvitz, 1998, for example). The genomic era has brought with it the systematic study of genetic interaction. In yeast, over 3000 genetic interactions have been identified from over 700 000 systematic crosses of precise gene deletion mutants (Tong et al, 2004). A similar interaction screen in metazoans would be a daunting challenge because both targeted deletion and genetic crosses are more labor intensive. RNAi, however, has provided an essential breakthrough, allowing for ‘knockdown ’ of specific genes at the transcript level. Caenorhabditis elegans is particularly amenable to RNAi, and the requisite doublestranded RNA reagents can be delivered either by microinjection or soaking methods, or by feeding of a specific ‘library’ strain of Escherichia coli to the worm. Using the feeding approach in C. elegans, Ahringer and coworkers (Kamath et al, 2003) performed the first genome-scale RNAi screen. Large-scale RNAi screens have since been performed in cultured fly and mammalian cells. Genetic interactions can be tested by performing such an RNAi screen in the presence and absence of mutation in a ‘query ’ gene. This approach has been used on successively increasing scales, and has recently approached a genome scale with studies of
Keyphrases
genetic interaction article number news view systematic genetics precise gene deletion mutant rnai screen feeding approach specific library strain genome scale targeted deletion systematic study interacting gene query gene specific gene transcript level mammalian cell rna reagent essential breakthrough surprising property cultured fly daunting challenge first genome-scale rnai screen similar interaction screen genetic cross escherichia coli large-scale rnai screen caenorhabditis elegans systematic cross genomic era known biological pathway
