TILLING - a high-throughput harvest for functional genomics

The availability of the whole genome sequence of many model organisms, combined with well-established chemical mutagenesis methods and cost-effective high-throughput DNA genotyping, allows mutations to be identified for virtually any gene. Recently dubbed TILLING ( for targeting induced local lesions in genomes), this general method is gaining popularity. In this article, I discuss some of the TILLING methods that are available, the successes that have been reported for several organisms and the future outlook for such methods.