Imaged based siRNA Screening for Novel Regulators of Genomic Integrity

This webinar was broadcast on August 26th.
Duration: 1 Hour

Please join us for this joint webinar with our special guest Renee D. Paulsen from the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, Stanford University.

Technological advances in automated microscopy now allow rapid acquisition of many images without human intervention. Given the increasing availability of these technologies, imaged based, large scale screens have come within the reach of individual labs, leading to many interesting new ways to probe novel biological questions. However, one main challenge in such screens is the conversion of the raw images into interpretable information and the underlying discoveries. The post-acquisition analysis of image-based screens requires computational steps to identify cells, asses their phenotypes, identify statistically significant effectors, and view the screening results on a systems level. Here we will discuss the design, implementation, validation, and results of an unbiased genome-wide siRNA screen using the phosphorylation of the histone variant H2AX as a read-out of double-strand break formation. We identified hundreds of genes whose down-regulation led to elevated levels of H2AX phosphorylation (γH2AX) and used existing databases to annotate and calculate functional enrichment within our significant effectors as well as to identify and build protein interaction networks of the genes involved in genome maintenance. These data indicate that preservation of genome stability is mediated by a larger network of biological processes than previously appreciated, and demonstrate the value of conducting large scale genomic approaches to comprehensively characterize gene function.

Webinar Replay