Power of Genetics

Three of the most important changes that were made in the approach to the problem were (a) to add the power of genetics and molecular biology to the armory of other methods that had previously been used, (b) to use a different organism, the aerobic Bij-producer Pseudomonas denitrificans, (c) to apply extensive... 

Chemical Complementation Bringing the Power of Genetics to Chemistry... 

Fig. 4.1-1 Chemical Complementation combines the power of genetic assays and small molecule chemistry to understand small molecule function and develop new chemistry inside the cell.

But it is the n-hybrid assays that have the potential to extend the power of genetics to molecules other than proteins, such as nucleic acids and small molecules. Despite this enormous potential, use of these other n-hybrid assays pales in comparison to that of the two-hybrid assay. As we argue in this chapter, a consideration of the published literature suggests that this discrepancy is not the result of some inherent technical limitation to the n-hybrid assays, but rather likely reflects the bias of current practice. Thus, it is here that we believe there is most potential for the future development of the n-hybrid assay and indeed genetics as a whole. Technically, the n-hybrid assays probably still can be further developed for different classes of molecules or posttranslational modifications. But already in their present form these assays seem to have tremendous potential for biological discovery, uncovering new functions for the many classes of molecules that make up the cell. 

Hughes, S.C., Fehon, R.G. Understanding ERM proteins-the awesome power of genetics finally brought to bear. Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 19, 51-56 (2007)... 

My close friendship with Charles Yanofsky and the times we spent together revealed to me the power of genetics for probing structure-function relationships of enzymes. Consequently, Bill Folk, Maurizio laccarino and I examined mutational alterations affecting amino acyl tRNA synthetases and John Carbon, Charles Hill, Larry Soli, Folk and Moshe Yaniv studied genetically altered tRNA " " the latter investigations proved to be the most productive because they showed that changes in nucleotide sequences of tRNA could affect the specificity of amino acylation and the translation of codons in mRNA. ... 

---