Abstract

Chemical genetics is increasingly being employed to decode traits in plants that may be recalcitrant to traditional genetics due to gene redundancy or lethality. However, the probability of a synthetic small molecule being bioactive is low; therefore, thousands of molecules must be tested in order to find those of interest. Liquid handling robotics systems are designed to handle large numbers of samples, increasing the speed with which a chemical library can be screened in addition to minimizing/standardizing error. To achieve a high-throughput forward chemical genetics screen of a library of 50,000 small molecules on Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis), protocols using a bench-top multichannel liquid handling robot were developed that require minimal technician involvement. With these protocols, 3,271 small molecules were discovered that caused visible phenotypic alterations. 1,563 compounds induced short roots, 1,148 compounds altered coloration, 383 compounds caused root hair and other, non-categorized, alterations, and 177 compounds inhibited germination.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-30-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of Visualized Experiments, issue 134, e57393, p. 1-9.

Copyright © 2018 Journal of Visualized Experiments

The copyright holder has granted the permission for posting the article here.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3791/57393

Funding Information

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement No. 1355438.

Related Content

The video component of this article can be found at https://www.jove.com/video/57393/.

Share

COinS