New mutant collection examines six thousand genes. Next big thing in drug discovery?

jerry submitted, created time 4 months 5 days (stke.sciencemag.org)

A major challenge in drug discovery is to identify the cellular targets responsible for the pharmacological activity of drug candidates. In the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a heterozygous diploid mutant collection of approximately six thousand strains, in each of which one copy of a single gene is deleted, is commercially available. With this collection, it is possible to evaluate the role of each gene product in the response of cells to a drug. Drug-induced haploinsufficiency refers to the situation where a heterozygous diploid mutant is more sensitive to a drug than is the wild-type strain. Drug-induced haploinsufficiency screening has the potential to reveal pharmacological targets of drugs and those that contribute to undesired side effects, as well as gene products involved in drug transport, metabolism, or resistance...

Keywords: drug discovery genes drug targets