Genes that are 'important' need not always be the busy ones. Elizabeth Winzeler of Stanford University School of Medicine, USA, and her colleagues measured the activity of more than 500 genes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as it grew in two different nutrient solutions. They then crippled each gene in turn and measured the effect on the yeast's growth. The researchers found that the more active genes were generally no more important for growth than genes whose activity did not change with the changing availability of nutrients. "This indicates that if you just look at gene activity, a lot of information may get skipped over," Winzeler says ( Science , Vol 285, p901).
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