RRC ID 11337
著者 Sawyer JM, Glass S, Li T, Shemer G, White ND, Starostina NG, Kipreos ET, Jones CD, Goldstein B.
タイトル Overcoming redundancy: an RNAi enhancer screen for morphogenesis genes in Caenorhabditis elegans.
ジャーナル Genetics
Abstract Morphogenesis is an important component of animal development. Genetic redundancy has been proposed to be common among morphogenesis genes, posing a challenge to the genetic dissection of morphogenesis mechanisms. Genetic redundancy is more generally a challenge in biology, as large proportions of the genes in diverse organisms have no apparent loss of function phenotypes. Here, we present a screen designed to uncover redundant and partially redundant genes that function in an example of morphogenesis, gastrulation in Caenorhabditis elegans. We performed an RNA interference (RNAi) enhancer screen in a gastrulation-sensitized double-mutant background, targeting genes likely to be expressed in gastrulating cells or their neighbors. Secondary screening identified 16 new genes whose functions contribute to normal gastrulation in a nonsensitized background. We observed that for most new genes found, the closest known homologs were multiple other C. elegans genes, suggesting that some may have derived from rounds of recent gene duplication events. We predict that such genes are more likely than single copy genes to comprise redundant or partially redundant gene families. We explored this prediction for one gene that we identified and confirmed that this gene and five close relatives, which encode predicted substrate recognition subunits (SRSs) for a CUL-2 ubiquitin ligase, do indeed function partially redundantly with each other in gastrulation. Our results implicate new genes in C. elegans gastrulation, and they show that an RNAi-based enhancer screen in C. elegans can be used as an efficient means to identify important but redundant or partially redundant developmental genes.
巻・号 188(3)
ページ 549-64
公開日 2011-7-1
DOI 10.1534/genetics.111.129486
PII genetics.111.129486
PMID 21527776
PMC PMC3176534
MeSH Animals Caenorhabditis elegans / cytology Caenorhabditis elegans / embryology Caenorhabditis elegans / genetics* Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins / chemistry Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins / genetics* Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins / metabolism Gastrulation / genetics* Gene Duplication Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental* Genes, Helminth Genetic Association Studies Genome, Helminth* High-Throughput Screening Assays* Microscopy, Confocal Multigene Family Mutation Phenotype Phylogeny RNA Interference* Sequence Alignment Sequence Analysis, DNA
IF 4.015
引用数 15
WOS 分野 GENETICS & HEREDITY
リソース情報
線虫 tm1239 tm3627 tm0278(tbx-11) tm2295(sdz-19) tm1226(vet-6) tm1378(sdz-22) tm1169(sdz-28) tm4187(C10A4.5) gad-3/B0222.9(tm3627)