Selecting genes for analysis using historically contingent progress: from RNA changes to protein-protein interactions.

ABSTRACT: Progress in biology has generated numerous lists of genes that share some property. But advancing from these lists of genes to understanding their roles is slow and unsystematic. Here we use RNA silencing in C. elegans to illustrate an approach for prioritizing genes for detailed study given limited resources. The partially subjective relationships between genes forged by both deduced functional relatedness and biased progress in the field was captured as mutual information and used to cluster genes that were frequently identified yet remain understudied. Some proteins encoded by these understudied genes are predicted to physically interact with known regulators of RNA silencing, suggesting feedback regulation. Predicted interactions with proteins that act in other processes and the

SUBMITTER: Lalit F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11092662 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature