Silent genes given voice

M ost mutations have no noticeable impact on an organism. This implies that changing the activity of some enzyme or other by a substantial factor has little effect; even complete deletion of a gene may not be easily detectable if there are appropriate fail-safe features in the design of the organism. Many genes, up to 85% of those in yeast, do not appear to be required for survival, and a high proportion of these seem to have no detectable effects on metabolic fluxes — the chemical processes that result in energy production or growth. This presents a major barrier to functional studies of a genome. How can we hope to deduce the function of a gene that has no apparent effect? Writing in Nature Biotechnology, Léonie Raamsdonk and colleagues argue that examining metabolite concentrations, which in total are known as the 'metabolome' , rather than fluxes, is much more likely to reveal such 'silent' genes (Nature Biotechnol. 19, 45–50; 2001). The authors call their method FANCY, which comes from 'functional analysis by co-responses in yeast' (in this case brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae). It uses the fact, long known but often ignored, that typical effects of changes in enzyme activity on metabolite concentrations are much larger than their effects on metabolic fluxes. The authors looked at two mutations affecting 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase, an enzyme whose product fructose 2,6-bisphosphate acts as a signal to regulate energy production; two mutations in the cytochrome oxidase complex , which catalyses a different energy-related process; and a mutation not related to energy metabolism that was used as a control. Why, though, should changes in enzyme activity have a larger effect on metabolite concentrations than on fluxes? The reason can be seen by looking at what happens when a rock falls into a river. Any transient interruption of the flow of water is rapidly nullified by the increasing level of water just above the rock and the decreasing level just below: as soon as the required pressure is reached, the flow returns to just what it was before. So the rock has no steady-state effect on the flow, although it does have a long-term effect on the water levels, which remain different from their original values as long as the obstacle remains in place. An observer with access only to the steady-state value of the flow can learn nothing about the existence of an obstacle , let alone its …