title: Quantitative analysis of genetic and neuronal multi-perturbation experiments.
abstract: Perturbation studies, in which functional performance is measured after deletion, mutation, or lesion of elements of a biological system, have been traditionally employed in many fields in biology. The vast majority of these studies have been qualitative and have employed single perturbations, often resulting in little phenotypic effect. Recently, newly emerging experimental techniques have allowed researchers to carry out concomitant multi-perturbations and to uncover the causal functional contributions of system elements. This study presents a rigorous and quantitative multi-perturbation analysis of gene knockout and neuronal ablation experiments. In both cases, a quantification of the elements' contributions, and new insights and predictions, are provided. Multi-perturbation analysis has a potentially wide range of applications and is gradually becoming an essential tool in biology.
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. kalon@post.tau.ac.il
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kaufman
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keinan
authors.forename: Isaac
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Meilijson
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kupiec
authors.forename: Eytan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Ruppin
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000166:cytology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000235:genetics; D004260:DNA Repair / Q000235:genetics; D017353:Gene Deletion; D008954:Models, Biological; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016296:Mutagenesis / Q000235:genetics*; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D010641:Phenotype; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000235:genetics; D049490:Systems Biology