Molecules and Cells

Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology (한국분자세포생물학회)
권호 표지

Training Molecularly Enabled Field Biologists to Understand Organism-Level Gene Function

  • Kang, Jin-Ho (Department of Energy-Plant Research Laboratory, Michigan State University) ;
  • Baldwin, Ian T. (Department of Molecular Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology)
  • Received : 2008.05.14
  • Accepted : 2008.05.16
  • Published : 2008.07.31
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Abstract

A gene's influence on an organism's Darwinian fitness ultimately determines whether it will be lost, maintained or modified by natural selection, yet biologists have few gene expression systems in which to measure whole-organism gene function. In the Department of Molecular Ecology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology we are training "molecularly enabled field biologists" to use transformed plants silenced in the expression of environmentally regulated genes and the plant's native habitats as "laboratories." Research done in these natural laboratories will, we hope, increase our understanding of the function of genes at the level of the organism. Examples of the role of threonine deaminase and RNA-directed RNA polymerases illustrate the process.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

Supported by : Max Planck Society

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