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Genome-wide RNAi screens in Caenorhabditis elegans: impact on cancer research

Oncogene volume 23, pages 8340–8345 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Genes linked to human cancers often function in evolutionary conserved pathways, and research in C. elegans has been instrumental in dissecting some of the pathways affected, such as apoptosis and Ras signalling. The advent of RNA interference (RNAi) technology has allowed high-throughput loss-of-function analyses of C. elegans gene functions. Here we review some of the most recent genome-wide RNAi screens that have been conducted and discuss their impact on cancer research and possibilities for future screens. We also show that genes causally implicated in human cancers are significantly more likely to have a C. elegans homologue than average, validating the use of C. elegans as a cancer gene discovery platform. We foresee that genome-wide RNAi screens in C. elegans will continue to be productive in identifying new cancer gene candidates and will provide further insights into cancer gene functions.

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Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to Peter Askjaer, Guillaume Lettre, and David Welchman for providing pictures for Figures 1A, B, 1C–F, and 1G–H, respectively. We also thank David Rivers, Nathalie Le Bot, and Verena Wolfram for their helpful comments on the manuscript. GP is supported by the Wellcome Trust and JA is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow (054523).

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  1. The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QR, UK

    Gino Poulin, Ramkumar Nandakumar & Julie Ahringer

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  1. Gino Poulin
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  2. Ramkumar Nandakumar
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  3. Julie Ahringer
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Correspondence to Julie Ahringer.

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Poulin, G., Nandakumar, R. & Ahringer, J. Genome-wide RNAi screens in Caenorhabditis elegans: impact on cancer research. Oncogene 23, 8340–8345 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.onc.1208010

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