Poulin Gino, Nandakumar Ramkumar, Ahringer Julie
The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge CB2 1QR, UK.
Oncogene. 2004 Nov 1;23(51):8340-5. doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1208010.
Genes linked to human cancers often function in evolutionary conserved pathways, and research in C. elegans has been instrumental in dissecting some of the pathways affected, such as apoptosis and Ras signalling. The advent of RNA interference (RNAi) technology has allowed high-throughput loss-of-function analyses of C. elegans gene functions. Here we review some of the most recent genome-wide RNAi screens that have been conducted and discuss their impact on cancer research and possibilities for future screens. We also show that genes causally implicated in human cancers are significantly more likely to have a C. elegans homologue than average, validating the use of C. elegans as a cancer gene discovery platform. We foresee that genome-wide RNAi screens in C. elegans will continue to be productive in identifying new cancer gene candidates and will provide further insights into cancer gene functions.
与人类癌症相关的基因通常在进化保守途径中发挥作用，秀丽隐杆线虫的研究有助于剖析一些受影响的途径，如细胞凋亡和Ras信号传导。RNA干扰（RNAi）技术的出现使得对秀丽隐杆线虫基因功能进行高通量功能缺失分析成为可能。在此，我们综述了最近进行的一些全基因组RNAi筛选，并讨论了它们对癌症研究的影响以及未来筛选的可能性。我们还表明，与人类癌症有因果关系的基因比平均水平更有可能有秀丽隐杆线虫的同源物，这证实了将秀丽隐杆线虫用作癌症基因发现平台的合理性。我们预计，秀丽隐杆线虫的全基因组RNAi筛选将继续有效地识别新的癌症基因候选物，并将进一步深入了解癌症基因的功能。
