C. elegans essential genes

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My laboratory works with a model organism called Caenorhabditis elegans (the nematode). It is in a small elite group of organisms that have been chosen by scientists as "models", that is to say surrogates for other animals. They (yeast, the fruit fly, the nematode, zebrafish, and the mouse) are all intensively worked on by hundreds, if not thousands of laboratories around the world. They each have properties that make them particularly valuable for investigating biological phenomena at various levels of complexity. C. elegans is the most recent entry into this elite group. It has a short generation time (3.5 days), numerous progeny (about 300), is transparent, has an entirely sequenced genome, and has one of the best organismal databases for collating genetic, molecular, and genomic data. C. elegans is also a complex organism with many cell types, having a multi-sectional gut, skin (hypoderm), structured nervous system, excretory system, and complex gonad. My research has focused on the structure of genetic information in higher organisms and specifically the nature and location of genes that produce products that are essential for survival of the organism. C. elegans, with its fully sequenced genome (completed in 1998), is an excellent organism to use when working on this type of problem. The genetic plan of the organism contains about 20,000 recognizable genes. My laboratory has focused on the subset that are required for survival and efficient reproduction, under laboratory conditions. There are more than 2,500 essential genes in C. elegans (similar number to the fruit fly and mouse). My lab has identified mutational variants (mutations that cause detectable changes) in over 500 of these essential genes. These have been a very rich source of information for a variety of aspects of biology. Our essential gene mutations have lead to discoveries in the control of cell proliferation, the nature of cell-cell signaling, energy metabolism, and gene regulation, to name a few. In this grant, I propose to continue our work on essential gene discovery using state of the art molecular genomic approaches, including DNA sequencing of the entire genetic information content.