Genome-wide prediction of genetic interactions in a metazoan.

Genetic interactions provide information about genes and processes with overlapping functions in biological systems. For Saccharomyces cerevisiae, computational integration of multiple types of functional genomic data is used to generate genome-wide predictions of genetic interactions. However, this methodology cannot be applied to the vastly more complex genome of metazoans, and only recently has the first metazoan genome-wide prediction of genetic interactions been reported. The prediction for Caenorhabditis elegans was generated by computationally integrating functional genomic data from S. cerevisiae, C. elegans and Drosophila melanogaster. This achievement is an important step toward system-level understanding of biological systems and human diseases. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.