What are some examples of how knocking out a gene helps find its function?
There are dozens of published examples. One of the most famous is the dopamine inhibitor uptake knockout. The mouse displays addictive behavior, as if addicted to cocaine. Another is the knockout of an adenosine receptor that mimics the effects of caffeine. Q: Not everyone sees the knockout mouse as the key to finding the functions of all these unknown genes. A: Some people think of knockouts as modeling human diseases. That’s not what they are really for. Rather, you use a knockout to model basic physiological effects. My point is that if you knock out a target [i.e. a gene], and see no effect on the mouse’s physiology, then that target should be deprioritized as a target for drug development, since there must be some alternative pathway. In general, industry believes that there are about 2,000 to 5,000 genes that represent possible targets in the genome. [Using various other methods], you can cull the 100,000 human genes down to 5,000, or maybe 10,000. Then you can ask where are thes
