Ait-Si-Ali Slimane, Guasconi Valentina, Harel-Bellan Annick
UPR 9079 CNRS, Labellisée Ligue nationale contre le cancer, Institut André-Lwoff, Villejuif, France.
Bull Cancer. 2004 Jan;91(1):15-8.
Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) or RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful tool for silencing gene expression. This mechanism was initially considered as a strange phenomenon limited to few plant species. It has become clear that PTGS occurs in both plants and animals and has roles in viral defense and transposon silencing mechanisms. However, the use of RNA interference triggered by the introduction of small double-stranded RNA (dsRNA or siRNA) into mammalian cells as a tool to knock down expression of specific genes holds the promise to selectively inhibit expression of disease-associated genes in humans. On the other hand, there are about 40,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome, but the function of most of them remains unknown. RNAi technology has now been developed for systematically deciphering the functions and interactions of these thousands of genes.
转录后基因沉默（PTGS）或RNA干扰（RNAi）是一种用于沉默基因表达的强大工具。这种机制最初被认为是一种仅限于少数植物物种的奇怪现象。现在已经清楚，PTGS在植物和动物中都存在，并且在病毒防御和转座子沉默机制中发挥作用。然而，通过将小双链RNA（dsRNA或siRNA）引入哺乳动物细胞触发RNA干扰，作为一种敲低特定基因表达的工具，有望选择性地抑制人类疾病相关基因的表达。另一方面，人类基因组中约有40000个蛋白质编码基因，但其中大多数基因的功能仍然未知。RNAi技术现已被开发用于系统地解读这数千个基因的功能和相互作用。
