Overview

This volume of Methods in Molecular Biology focuses on techniques to determine the function of a gene. Traditionally, the function of a gene was determined following cloning, which provided its DNA sequence and an ab- ity to modify this sequence. Experiments were performed that looked for p- notypic changes in a cell line or model organism following modifications to the sequence, knocking out of the gene, or enhancing expression of the gene. In the 1990’s, the growing sequence databases and the BLAST algorithm provided additional power by allowing identification of genes with known function that had similar sequences and potentially similar molecular mechanisms. On the experimental side, methods, such as two-hybrid screening that could directly determine the partners of specific proteins and even the domains of interaction, came into widespread use. With the advent of high-throughput technologies following completion of the human genome project and similar projects in model organisms, the n- ber of genes of interest has expanded and the traditional methods for gene fu- tion analysis cannot achieve the throughput necessary for large-scale exploration. Although computational tools such as BLAST remain a good point of departure, it is often the case that a gene that appears interesting in a hi- throughput experiment shows no obvious similarity to a gene of known fu- tion. In addition, when BLAST does find a similar gene, the process has often only begun.

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Reviews

From the reviews: 'Gene Function Analysis' is volume 408 of the 'Methods in Molecular Biology' series. The aim of the book is to provide both in silico and laboratory methods for the functional analysis of the large amount of gene expression data generated from high throughput technologies such as microarrays. ! This book would certainly be a useful addition to a laboratory interested in assessing gene function through both bioinformatic and 'wet' approaches. Definitely one for the more (toxico)genomically challenged amongst us. (James Sidaway, British Toxicology Society Newsletter, Summer, 2008)

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