Genes and genomes: Reverse genetics of caenorhabditis elegans

✍ Scribed by Ronald H. A. Plasterk

• Book ID: 102760859
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1992
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 576 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0265-9247
• DOI: 10.1002/bies.950140911

✦ Synopsis

It is somewhat ironic that animals that are the prime choice for detailed genetic analysis, such as the fruit fly and the nematode, have thus far been largely refractory to reverse genetic analysis. Their detailed genetic map, and small genome size have made them subjects of ambitious genome analysis projects, but there is still no strategy to introduce desired changes into their genomcs by homologous recombination. Some alternative approaches have recently become available; this review describes possibilities and unsolved problems for reverse genetics in the nematode Caenorhubditis elegans. The transposon Tcl could prove to be very useful for the isolation of knock out mutants, and possibly also for introduction of more subtle alterations.