Toward Improving Caenorhabditis elegans Phenome Mapping With an ORFeome-Based RNAi Library

  1. Jean-François Rual1,2,6,
  2. Julian Ceron3,6,
  3. John Koreth4,
  4. Tong Hao1,
  5. Anne-Sophie Nicot1,
  6. Tomoko Hirozane-Kishikawa1,
  7. Jean Vandenhaute2,
  8. Stuart H. Orkin5,
  9. David E. Hill1,
  10. Sander van den Heuvel3,7, and
  11. Marc Vidal1,7
  1. 1 Center for Cancer Systems Biology and Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
  2. 2 Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix, 5000 Namur, Belgium
  3. 3 Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129; USA
  4. 4 Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
  5. 5 Department of Pediatric Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA

Abstract

The recently completed Caenorhabditis elegans genome sequence allows application of high-throughput (HT) approaches for phenotypic analyses using RNA interference (RNAi). As large phenotypic data sets become available, “phenoclustering” strategies can be used to begin understanding the complex molecular networks involved in development and other biological processes. The current HT-RNAi resources represent a great asset for phenotypic profiling but are limited by lack of flexibility. For instance, existing resources do not take advantage of the latest improvements in RNAi technology, such as inducible hairpin RNAi. Here we show that a C. elegans ORFeome resource, generated with the Gateway cloning system, can be used as a starting point to generate alternative HT-RNAi resources with enhanced flexibility. The versatility inherent to the Gateway system suggests that additional HT-RNAi libraries can now be readily generated to perform gene knockdowns under various conditions, increasing the possibilities for phenome mapping in C. elegans.

Footnotes

  • [Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]

  • Article and publication are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.2505604.

  • 6 These authors contributed equally to this work.

  • 7 Corresponding authors. E-MAIL marc_vidal{at}dfci.harvard.edu; FAX (617) 632-5739. E-MAIL heuvel{at}helix.mgh.harvard.edu; FAX (617) 724-9648.

    • Accepted May 4, 2004.
    • Received February 24, 2004.
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