Scientists working on functional genomics will now be able to benefit from ground-breaking work by Dr Julie Ahringer and her group at the University’s Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology. The University has signed an agreement with MRC geneservice to release a new, revolutionary tool based on the team’s work that will assist in drug discovery and basic research.

The tool is a collection of reagents each of which stops just one gene working through a mechanism called RNA interference (RNAi). The collection consists of six sets of bacterial strains corresponding to the six chromosomes of a simple worm (C. elegans) which scientists use as a model for all animals.

"Being able to inhibit gene function is critical to understanding how genes work in health and disease. Once again, the worm is leading the way," said MRC geneservice Chief Scientist Martin Yuille.

All together, MRC geneservice is releasing nearly 17,000 bacterial strains: one for nearly every gene in the worm. Researchers worldwide will for the first time be able to investigate what happens when any of the worms' genes are inhibited.

Dr Ahringer commented: "Using this library, there is the enormous potential for understanding what all the genes in an animal do, and through this, discovering how development and disease come about."

MRC geneservice is the UK's leading distributor of genomic resources. It is wholly owned by the Medical Research Council.

Dr Ahringer's paper describing the RNAi library can be found in Nature (16 January 2003): "Systematic functional analysis of the Caenorhabditis elegans genome using RNAi".

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