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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

No-go decay: a quality control mechanism for RNA in translation.

TL;DR: NGD targets mRNAs with elongation stalls for degradation initiated by endonucleolytic cleavage in the vicinity of the stalled ribosome and is promoted by the evolutionarily conserved Dom34 and Hbs1 proteins, which are related to the translation termination factors eRF1 and eRF3, respectively.
Journal ArticleDOI

Distinct and redundant functions of histone deacetylases HDAC1 and HDAC2 in proliferation and tumorigenesis.

TL;DR: New findings on redundant and unique functions ofHDAC1 and HDAC2 as regulators of proliferation and tumorigenesis are discussed and potential implications for applications of HDAC inhibitors as therapeutic drugs are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Talin, vinculin and DRP (utrophin) concentrations are increased at mdx myotendinous junctions following onset of necrosis.

TL;DR: Findings indicate that mdx mice may compensate in part for the absence of dystrophin by increased expression of other molecules that subsume dyStrophin's mechanical function.
Journal ArticleDOI

Transcriptional and phenotypic comparisons of Ppara knockout and siRNA knockdown mice

TL;DR: Hydrodynamic delivery of small interfering RNA to knockdown peroxisome proliferator activated receptor alpha (Ppara), a gene that is central to the regulation of fatty acid metabolism, is used to validate the utility of the RNAi approach and suggest that siRNA can be used as a complement to classical knockout technology in gene function studies.
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