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Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Genetic compensation: A phenomenon in search of mechanisms.

TLDR
This review revisits studies reporting genetic compensation in higher eukaryotes and outlines possible molecular mechanisms, which may include both transcriptional and posttranscriptional processes.
Abstract
Several recent studies in a number of model systems including zebrafish, Arabidopsis, and mouse have revealed phenotypic differences between knockouts (i.e., mutants) and knockdowns (e.g., antisense-treated animals). These differences have been attributed to a number of reasons including off-target effects of the antisense reagents. An alternative explanation was recently proposed based on a zebrafish study reporting that genetic compensation was observed in egfl7 mutant but not knockdown animals. Dosage compensation was first reported in Drosophila in 1932, and genetic compensation in response to a gene knockout was first reported in yeast in 1969. Since then, genetic compensation has been documented many times in a number of model organisms; however, our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms remains limited. In this review, we revisit studies reporting genetic compensation in higher eukaryotes and outline possible molecular mechanisms, which may include both transcriptional and posttranscriptional processes.

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Journal Article

Genetic compensation induced by deleterious mutations but not gene knockdowns

TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that egfl7 mutants do not show any obvious phenotypes while animals injected with egfl 7 morpholino (morphants) exhibit severe vascular defects, indicating that the activation of a compensatory network to buffer against deleterious mutations was not observed after translational or transcriptional knockdown.
Journal ArticleDOI

IGF-Binding Proteins: Why Do They Exist and Why Are There So Many?

TL;DR: The emerging explanation that many IGFBP functions have evolved to allow the targeted adjustment of IGF signaling under stressful or irregular conditions, which would likely not be revealed in a standard laboratory setting are explored.
Journal ArticleDOI

Highly Efficient CRISPR-Cas9-Based Methods for Generating Deletion Mutations and F0 Embryos that Lack Gene Function in Zebrafish

TL;DR: Supernumerary guanine nucleotides at the 5' ends of single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) account for diminished CRISPR-Cas9 activity in zebrafish embryos and heritable deletion mutations of at least 50 kbp can be readily induced using pairs of duplex guide RNPs targeted to a single chromosome.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

CRISPR knockout screening outperforms shRNA and CRISPRi in identifying essential genes

TL;DR: It is found that the CRISPR technology performed best, with low noise, minimal off-target effects and consistent activity across reagents, with a traditional short hairpin RNA (shRNA)-based system for performing lethality screens.
Journal ArticleDOI

Over 20% of human transcripts might form sense–antisense pairs

TL;DR: In this study, a set of very stringent criteria to identify the correct orientation of each human transcript was established and these orientation-reliable transcripts were used to create 26 741 transcription clusters in the human genome.
Journal ArticleDOI

Systematic comparison of CRISPR/Cas9 and RNAi screens for essential genes

TL;DR: The ability of short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and CRISPR/Cas9 screens to identify essential genes in the human chronic myelogenous leukemia cell line K562 is compared.
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A Drosophila Genetic Resource of Mutants to Study Mechanisms Underlying Human Genetic Diseases

TL;DR: A mosaic genetic screen of lethal mutations on the Drosophila X chromosome is conducted to identify genes required for the development, function, and maintenance of the nervous system and to provide insights into microcephaly associated with brain dysgenesis.
Journal ArticleDOI

Arabidopsis gene knockout: phenotypes wanted.

TL;DR: It appears that many mutations are conditional and/or do not alter plant morphology even in the presence of severe physiological defects, and gene knockout per se is not sufficient to assess gene function and must be integrated into a more global approach for determining biological functions.
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