Recently, a set of 766 genes that are enriched in the ovary as compared to the soma was identified by microarray analysis [1]. Here, we report a functional analysis of 98% of these genes by RNA interference (RNAi). Over half the genes tested showed at least one detectable phenotype, most commonly embryonic lethality, consistent with the expectation that ovary transcripts would be enriched for genes that are essential in basic cellular and developmental processes. We find that essential genes are more likely to be conserved and to be highly expressed in the ovary. We extend previous observations and find that fewer than the expected number of ovary-expressed essential genes are present on the X chromosome. We characterized early embryonic defects for 161 genes and used time-lapse microscopy to systematically describe the defects for each gene in terms of 47 RNAi-associated phenotypes. In this paper, we discuss the use of these data to group genes into "phenoclusters"; in the accompanying paper, we use these data as one component in the integration of different types of large-scale functional analyses. We find that phenoclusters correlate well with sequence-based functional predictions and thus may be useful in predicting functions of uncharacterized genes.
Pubmed ID: 12445391 RIS Download
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Central data repository for nematode biology including complete genomic sequence, gene predictions and orthology assignments from range of related nematodes.Data concerning genetics, genomics and biology of C. elegans and related nematodes. Derived from initial ACeDB database of C. elegans genetic and sequence information, WormBase includes genomic, anatomical and functional information of C. elegans, other Caenorhabditis species and other nematodes. Maintains public FTP site where researchers can find many commonly requested files and datasets, WormBase software and prepackaged databases.
View all literature mentionsIt provides access to results from RNAi interference studies in C. elegans, including images, movies, phenotypes, and graphical maps. RNAiDB contains all published RNAi experiments in C. elegans that have been deposited in WormBase, including data from the literature and published large-scale RNAi studies. RNAi to gene mappings for all experiments have been re-analyzed using ePCR and/or a sliding n-mer window method to identify all genes in different genomic locations that may potentially be inhibited by each experiment. Gene maps showing canonical and putative alternate mappings are displayed graphically on RNAi Experiment and Gene/ORF card pages.
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