Large-scale cancer transcription profiling studies commonly deliver long lists of "candidate" genes which are putatively associated with the respective disease. For most of these, no functional information, even less their relevance in pathological conditions is established as they had been identified in large-scale genomics approaches. In my talk I will present a suite of cell-based assays that systematically screen uncharacterized genes that were previously obtained from tumor profiling, for their implication in regulating pathways of the cell cycle and cell maintenance (exemplified by MAPKinase signaling and apoptosis regulation).
The focus will be on the concepts of automated high-throughput assays with single cell resolution by FACS analysis as well as on the computational tools developed for data processing and analysis.