Talk: Using C. elegans to discover functions of conserved unknown human genes¶
Cornell University
When: Thursday, 9/17/2015, at 9:15am
Where: Genome Center room 1005
Abstract:
Two-thirds of protein-coding genes in humans are conserved between humans and invertebrates, and must therefore be crucial for metazoan biology. But many of these genes are still effectively unknown: their products often have no well-defined function, and sometimes even lack recognizable protein domains. My colleagues and I are using a combination of bioinformatics and biology in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to begin identifying roles for 160 families of these “conserved unknown” genes. I will describe the strategy we used to identify the genes, some of their known traits, and our results from loss-of-function genetic assays (via RNAi and deletion alleles) in cell migration, chemosensation, and neurotransmission.
Host: C. Titus Brown, ctbrown@ucdavis.edu
