Exploiting genetic variation to discover genes involved in important disease phenotypes

Paul Capewell, Anneli Cooper, Caroline Clucas, Willie Weir, Heli Vaikkinen, Liam Morrison, Andy Tait, Annette MacLeod

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

Elucidating the underlying genetic determinants of disease pathology is still in the early stages for many pathogenic parasites. There have, however, been a number of advances in which natural genetic diversity has been successfully utilized to untangle the often complex interactions between parasite and host. In this chapter we discuss various methods capable of exploiting this natural genetic variation to determine genes involved in phenotypes of interest, using virulence in the pathogenic parasite Trypanosoma brucei as a case study. This species is an ideal system to benefit from such an approach as there are several well-characterized laboratory strains; the parasite undergoes genetic exchange in both the field and the laboratory, and is amenable to efficient reverse genetics and RNAi.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)91-107
Number of pages17
JournalMethods in Molecular Biology
Volume1201
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Oct 2015

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