Genome-Wide RNAi of C. elegans Using the Hypersensitive rrf-3 Strain Reveals Novel Gene Functions

RNA-mediated interference (RNAi) is a method to inhibit gene function by introduction of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). Recently, an RNAi library was constructed that consists of bacterial clones expressing dsRNA, corresponding to nearly 90% of the 19,427 predicted genes of C. elegans. Feeding of this RNAi library to the standard wild-type laboratory strain Bristol N2 detected phenotypes for approximately 10% of the corresponding genes. To increase the number of genes for which a loss-of-function phenotype can be detected, we undertook a genome-wide RNAi screen using the rrf-3 mutant strain, which we found to be hypersensitive to RNAi. Feeding of the RNAi library to rrf-3 mutants resulted in additional…

• WT
  Wellcome Trust
• UA
  U.S. Army