Abstract
Metazoan genomes contain thousands of sequence tracts that match the guanine-quadruplex (G4) DNA signature G3NxG3NxG3NxG3, a motif that is intrinsically mutagenic, probably because it can form secondary structures during DNA replication. Here we show how and to what extent this feature can be used to generate deletion alleles of many Caenorhabditis elegans genes.
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Acknowledgements
We thank members of the Tijsterman lab for discussions, R. Plasterk for generous support and WormBase curators for building the platform that allows C. elegans genomic research. This work was funded by a Horizon grant from the Netherlands Genomics Initiative and a Vidi grant from ZonMw to M.T.
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Contributions
D.B.P., E.K. and M.T. performed the experiments and analyzed the data. V.G. performed the bioinformatics analysis. M.T. conceived and supervised the project, and wrote the paper.
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Supplementary Text and Figures
Supplementary Figures 1–2 and Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 528 kb)
Supplementary Table 2
C. elegans endogenous G4- sites (XLS 475 kb)
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Pontier, D., Kruisselbrink, E., Guryev, V. et al. Isolation of deletion alleles by G4 DNA-induced mutagenesis. Nat Methods 6, 655–657 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1362
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1362
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