Drug-Induced Haploinsufficiency of Fission Yeast Provides a Powerful Tool for Identification of Drug Targets

Genome-wide systematic deletion mutants were generated using a PCR-based targeted mutagenesis of Schizosacchaaromyces pombe. In a drug-sensitivity assay using thiabendazole(TBZ), an inhibitor of microtubule assembly, a heterozygous nda2 mutant ($nda2^+/nda2^-$), deleting one copy of nda2 encoding the microtubule subunit alpha1 demonstrated a distinct sensitivity to TBZ, indicating TBZ-induced haploinsufficiency. This result suggests that profiling drug-induced haploinsufficiency can be exploited to identify target genes for drugs and discover new drugs.