CMMB 461 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Tumor Suppressor Gene, Short Hairpin Rna, Reverse Genetics

• School: University of Calgary
• Department: Cellular, Molecular and Microbial Biology
• Course: CMMB 461
• Professor: Gordon Chua

Document Summary

Idea: use reverse genetics to identify essential genes in cancer cells. Essential genes, when knocked out, would cause cell death. Cancer cell divide uncontrollably, if we kill these essential genes, we can control cancer. Shrna screen for lof mutations that stop cancer cells from dividing or kill them. These essential genes could represent potential drug targets to kill the cell. Expect essential genes to be common in all cancers, as well as cancer specific. The identity of the genes could provide clues to their function and the molecular basis (growth regulatory pathways) behind specific cancers. By identifying these genes, we could find out the molecular genetics involved in formation of cancer cell from normal cell. Infect cancer cells with a pooled shrna library and use a barcode microarray to see which shrnas cause cancer cells to stop dividing. Molecular barcode are gene/probe specific sequences in the shrna stem (half-hairpin (hh) barcodes)