Researchers Develop Drug-based Genetic Platform Technology Focused on Improving Genetic Screening

Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine, US, have developed a technology-enabled genetic platform focused on improving genetic screening. To do so, the researcher conducted a study on genetic manipulations of fruit flies without requiring thousands of individual flies for screening with the help of drug-based genetic platform technology.

According to Dr. Koen Venken, the co-corresponding author, the key focus of the study was to study particular physical traits in lesser time.The idea behind this new technology-enabled genetic platform was to instead of tagging the genes of interest with a physical trait, and the genes are tagged with another gene that has the ability to respond to a specific drug.

Instead of manually screening the physical traits of the genes, the drug platform can now be used to select or counter-select only those flies that carry the genes of interest. The Researchers using the drug platform were successfully able to screen those flies with genes of interest. These findings are important as there is a possibility that future gene screening will be done in lesser time. Also, this may work well as an effective strategy and make Researchers more productive.

According to the Researchers, the framework would accelerate research, make the research process easier, simple and fast. As a result, the overall process will benefit from the drug-based technology platform right from the understanding of fundamentals to implementing them as translational outcomes. The detailed study undertaken by the Researchers and the findings has been presented in the journal Cell Reports.