TY - JOUR T1 - Caenorhabditis elegans Genomic Response to Soil Bacteria Predicts Environment-Specific Genetic Effects on Life History Traits A1 - Coolon, Joseph D. A1 - Jones, Kenneth L. A1 - Todd, Timothy C. A1 - Carr, Bryanua C. A1 - Herman, Michael A. Y1 - 2009/06/05 N2 - Authors Summary Transcriptional profiling is often used to identify genes that are differentially regulated in response to different environments. These experiments assume that genes differentially expressed in response to different environments are functionally important and, furthermore, that the degree of differential gene expression is predictive of the magnitude of functional importance. In genetic experiments, function is inferred from analyzing the phenotypes of removing, reducing or altering gene function. However, to date, there has not been a specific test of how well the degree of differential gene expression between two (or more) environments is predictive of gene function. Here we identified C. elegans genes that were differentially expressed in response to different bacterial environments and determined the phenotypic differences of life history traits between these environments using mutant strains that compromised gene function. We found that differential gene expression is indeed predictive of functional importance of the identified genes in different environments. This observation has important implications for interpreting the results of transcriptional profiling experiments of populations of organisms in their native environments, where in many cases the genetic tools to disrupt gene function have not yet been fully developed or interfering with gene functions in nature may not be feasible. JF - PLOS Genetics JA - PLOS Genetics VL - 5 IS - 6 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000503 SP - e1000503 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000503 ER -