A Genetic Interaction Screening Approach in C. elegans.

Abstract

Genetic interaction screens have played a critical role in better understanding epistasis and functional relationships among genes. These screens have been conducted at multiple scales, ranging from testing pairwise interactions genome-wide in yeast and bacteria, to more focused screens in multicellular organisms and cultured cells. Here, I describe a strategy that facilitates genetic interaction screens with loss of function alleles in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. I also present a simple downstream assay to measure the effects of combinations of mutations on fitness.