Using a technique called “gene trapping,” researchers have built a library of haploid human cell lines. The collection includes more than 3,000 lines, each one possessing a different mutated gene, a team led by researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Vienna firm Haplogen reports August 25 in Nature Methods.
Functional studies of genes can be greatly aided by the use of haploid cell lines—those that have just one of each chromosome, rather than a pair—because the effects of mutations in an allele won’t be masked by the other chromosome. “Having a complete knockout, you’ll have much stronger phenotypes compared to other techniques,” said Jan Carette, a Stanford University professor who was not involved in the current study, but who has collaborated with the authors.
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Read the full, original story here: Single-Gene Knockout Collection Created
