St Johnston Daniel
Wellcome/CRC Institute and Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QR, UK.
Nat Rev Genet. 2002 Mar;3(3):176-88. doi: 10.1038/nrg751.
The success of Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism is largely due to the power of forward genetic screens to identify the genes that are involved in a biological process. Traditional screens, such as the Nobel-prize-winning screen for embryonic-patterning mutants, can only identify the earliest phenotype of a mutation. This review describes the ingenious approaches that have been devised to circumvent this problem: modifier screens, for example, have been invaluable for elucidating signal-transduction pathways, whereas clonal screens now make it possible to screen for almost any phenotype in any cell at any stage of development.
黑腹果蝇作为一种模式生物取得成功，很大程度上归功于正向遗传筛选的强大功能，即通过它来识别参与生物过程的基因。传统筛选方法，比如因筛选胚胎模式突变体而获得诺贝尔奖的那种筛选，只能识别突变的最早表型。本综述描述了为规避这一问题而设计出的巧妙方法：例如，修饰基因筛选对于阐明信号转导途径非常重要，而克隆筛选现在使得在发育的任何阶段对任何细胞中的几乎任何表型进行筛选成为可能。
