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Genome scale analysis of cellular processes using RNAi

Published on September 29, 2008 Reviewed on May 31, 2018   46 min

A selection of talks on Cell Biology

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0:00
Hello, I'm Amy Kiger from the University of California in San Diego. And I'll be talking to you today about genome scale analysis of cellular processes using RNAi.
0:12
So I'll be talking primarily about a new methodology that has recently come to Drosophila, and that is to do with the era of functional genomics. And this terminology has been thrown around a lot recently. But really, it's classic genetics with a twist in that it's now sequence informed genetics. Given the complete genome sequence that's available. Simply we can use genome sequence to guide the systematic perturbations in order to identify potentially all gene functions that contribute to a specific cellular process.
0:46
Drosophila of course has a long history as a useful model organism for functional analysis and many genes have been well characterized now in the organism. With the advent of complete genome sequence available, Drosophila is also now an ideal model for functional genomic approaches. And these work conducted in cells and culture will complement the ongoing efforts for in vivo analysis with mutant animals. So today I'll be talking about the use of Drosophila cell lines and information we can learn there at the cellular level for gene functions to then make predictions, as well as provide insights for ongoing studies in the animal and during development.
1:28
The discovery of the cellular process of RNA interference or RNAi has been advantageous for the exploitation of this process for functional genomic approaches in many organisms. So what is RNAi? RNAi occurs when the cells receive double stranded RNA, serves as a trigger that then leads to the destruction of cellular mRNAs that carry homologous sequences. And although this is a highly simplified cartoon of the process, current research has found that this is highly specific in that the double stranded RNA is processed into short interfering RNAs or siRNAs of 21 base pairs, and that this 21 base pair match to the target RNA is imperative in order for the destruction machinery to destroy the target RNA. So, non specific matches will not lead to destruction and only specific matches of the 21 nucleotides and like.

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Genome scale analysis of cellular processes using RNAi

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