Gene function in plants

hairpinRNAi – a powerful enabling technology for functional genomics

With the launching of ‘whole genome sequencing projects’, the precise genetic blueprint of several animals and plants is now known. It is estimated that about 25,000 protein encoding genes exist in the model plant Arabidopsis and up to 50,000 in rice.

A key challenge now is to identify the function of each of these genes and to dissect their interactions with other genes. This exciting new study of discovering gene function is known as “Functional Genomics”.

One of the strategies to determine gene function is to disrupt its activity and observe the effect on the plant – a process known as “Reverse Genetics”. HairpinRNAi is proving to be a productive technology for reverse genetics.