Suppression mechanisms - themes from variations

Suppressor analysis is a commonly used strategy to identify functional rela tionships between genes that might not have been revealed through other gen etic or biochemical means. Many mechanisms that explain the phenomenon of g enetic suppression have been described, but the wide variety of possible me chanisms can present a challenge to defining the relationship between a sup pressor and the original gene. This article provides a broad framework for classifying suppression mechanisms and describes a series of genetic tests that can be applied to determine the most likely mechanism of suppression.