The Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, 76100, Israel.
Ann Bot. 2013 Mar;111(3):329-33. doi: 10.1093/aob/mcs161. Epub 2012 Jul 18.
Studying a process in a new species often relies on focusing our attention to a candidate gene, encoding a protein similar to one with a known function. Not all the choices seem to be prudent.
This Viewpoint includes an overview of issues that are encountered during research of candidate genes. Defining a match for a gene of interest, deciding whether variation in ESTs or RNAseq data for a certain transcript, represent more than one gene. The problem of incorrect annotation of genes due to incorrect in-silico splicing, is also mentioned. The author's humble opinion on how to deal with these issues is provided.
The vast amount of new sequence data provides us with great possibilities for giant leaps in our understanding. Still, we cannot afford to skip over the tedious steps required to confirm that we are indeed studying the correct gene, and try to be sure that the complex expression pattern we observe is not a composite of several genes.
在新物种中研究一个过程通常依赖于将我们的注意力集中在一个候选基因上，该基因编码一种与具有已知功能的蛋白质相似的蛋白质。并非所有的选择看起来都是明智的。
本观点包括在研究候选基因时遇到的问题概述。定义感兴趣的基因的匹配，确定 EST 或特定转录本的 RNAseq 数据中的变异是否代表多个基因。由于错误的计算机剪接导致基因注释不正确的问题也被提及。作者就如何处理这些问题提供了自己的看法。
大量的新序列数据为我们提供了巨大的可能性，可以让我们在理解上取得巨大的飞跃。不过，我们还是不能跳过确认我们正在研究正确基因所需的繁琐步骤，并且要尽力确保我们观察到的复杂表达模式不是几个基因的组合。
