Genome-wide RNAi screen for synthetic lethal interactions with the C. elegans kinesin-5 homolog BMK-1

Kinesins are a superfamily of microtubule-based molecular motors that perform various transport needs and have essential roles in cell division. Among these, the kinesin-5 family has been shown to play a major role in the formation and maintenance of the bipolar mitotic spindle. Moreover, recent work suggests that kinesin-5 motors may have additional roles. In contrast to most model organisms, the sole kinesin-5 gene in Caenorhabditis elegans, bmk-1, is not required for successful mitosis and animals lacking bmk-1 are viable and fertile. To gain insight into factors that may act redundantly with BMK-1 in spindle assembly and to identify possible additional cellular pathways involving BMK-1, we performed a synthetic lethal screen using the bmk-1 deletion allele ok391. We successfully knocked down 82% of the C. elegans genome using RNAi and assayed viability in bmk-1(ok391) and wild type strains using an automated high-throughput approach based on fluorescence microscopy. The dataset includes a final list of 37 synthetic lethal interactions whose further study is likely to provide insight into kinesin-5 function.