Biology:Morphant
An organism which has been treated with a morpholino antisense oligo to temporarily knock down expression of a targeted gene is called a morphant.
Background
This term was coined by Prof. Steve Ekker[1] to describe the zebrafish with which he was experimenting; by knocking down embryonic gene expression using Morpholinos, Prof. Ekker "phenocopied" known zebrafish mutations, that is, he raised embryos that had the same morphological phenotype as embryonic zebrafish with specific gene mutations. Prof. Ekker's papers[2] and presentations describing morphant phenocopies of mutant phenotypes, in combination with Prof. Janet Heasman's earlier work[3] with Morpholinos in Xenopus embryos, led to rapid adoption of Morpholino technology by the developmental biology community.
References
- ↑ Ekker SC (December 2000). "Morphants: a new systematic vertebrate functional genomics approach". Yeast 17 (4): 302–306. doi:10.1002/1097-0061(200012)17:4<302::AID-YEA53>3.0.CO;2-#. PMID 11119307.
- ↑ "Effective targeted gene 'knockdown' in zebrafish". Nat. Genet. 26 (2): 216–20. October 2000. doi:10.1038/79951. PMID 11017081.
- ↑ "Beta-catenin signaling activity dissected in the early Xenopus embryo: a novel antisense approach". Dev. Biol. 222 (1): 124–34. June 2000. doi:10.1006/dbio.2000.9720. PMID 10885751.
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