Dial-a-mutant: web-based knockout collections for model organisms

Although much of eukaryotic cell biology is highly conserved, the most biomedically relevant organisms are often the most difficult or expensive to study. Non-vertebrate model organisms offer a practical and accessible alternative. Large collections of loss-of-function mutants have now been generated in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the angiosperm Arabidopsis thaliana, which can be easily accessed via the Internet. The sites reviewed in the present article include those of the C. elegans Knockout Consortium (http://celeganskoconsortium.omrf.org/) and the C. elegans National Bioresource Project of Japan (http://shigen.lab.nig.ac.jp/c.elegans/index.jsp), and also the NemaGENETAG project (http://elegans.imbb.forth.gr/nemagenetag/) for the former and T-DNA Express (http://signal.salk.edu/cgi-bin/tdnaexpress) for the latter. These sites allow one to easily identify and request C. elegans strains bearing mutations in approximately half of predicted genes and for essentially every Arabidopsis gene. These tools greatly enhance the ability of non-specialists to conduct studies of gene function in vivo in these model species.