RNA Interference and Potential Applications

Abstract

RNA interference (RNAi) is the process of using specific sequences of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to knock down the expression level of sequence-homologous genes. Such ability of small interfering RNA (siRNA) in mammalian cells will undoubtedly revolutionize the study of functional genomics, the discovery of drug targets and even the treatment of human diseases. In this review we briefly describe the history of RNAi discovery, the RNAi mechanism and the general guideline for siRNA design as well as various methods for siRNA production and delivery. We also introduce the potential applications of siRNA, inducible siRNA and siRNA library in speeding up basic biomedical research and in acting as potential therapeutic agents for treatment of numerous human diseases.

siRNA-mediated knockdown of connective tissue growth factor prevents N-nitrosodimethylamine-induced hepatic fibrosis in rats

“…[24][25][26] Using this technology, the expression of a particular gene can be reduced often to 80-90% and thus its cognate protein. Introduction of a suitable mammalian expression vector carrying a template DNA strand into the cells and the subsequent expression of the corresponding siRNA molecules forms the basis of the mammalian RNA interference.…”

A more efficient RNAi inducible system for tight regulation of gene expression in mammalian cells and xenograft animals

“…One effective way to validate a potential target is to introduce a siRNA that mimics an antagonist into cancer cells to evaluate its effect on the tumor cell transformation phenotype (Ke et al 2006;Zhou et al 2006). However, inhibition of cancer therapeutic target expression often leads to cell death, preventing the production of stably silenced cells to be used in xenograft models, which are always more reliable to predict the therapeutic value of the target.…”

Altered osteogenic commitment of human mesenchymal stem cells by ERM protein-dependent modulation of cellular biomechanics

“…In the present study we applied RNA interference technique to modulate the mechanical properties of stem cells undergoing the osteogenic commitment, and characterized them using AFM and LOT. Since RNAi provides temporal down-regulation of the targeted genes (Zhou et al, 2006), it appears as a useful tool to test the role of ERM proteins in the hMSC mechanics and the dynamics of cell commitment to a pre-selected phenotype.…”