Kusaba Makoto
Institute of Radiation Breeding, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, PO Box 3, Ohmiya-machi, Naka-gun, Ibaraki 319-2293, Japan.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2004 Apr;15(2):139-43. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2004.02.004.
RNA interference (RNAi) is a post-transcriptional gene-silencing phenomenon induced by double-stranded RNA. It has been widely used as a knockdown technology to analyze gene function in various organisms. Although RNAi was first discovered in worms, related phenomena such as post-transcriptional gene silencing and coat protein mediated protection from viral infection had been observed in plants prior to this. In plants, RNAi is often achieved through transgenes that produce hairpin RNA. For genetic improvement of crop plants, RNAi has advantages over antisense-mediated gene silencing and co-suppression, in terms of its efficiency and stability. It also offers advantages over mutation-based reverse genetics in its ability to suppress transgene expression in multigene families in a regulated manner.
RNA干扰（RNAi）是一种由双链RNA诱导的转录后基因沉默现象。它已被广泛用作一种敲低技术，以分析各种生物体中的基因功能。尽管RNAi最早是在蠕虫中发现的，但在此之前，植物中就已经观察到了诸如转录后基因沉默和外壳蛋白介导的病毒感染保护等相关现象。在植物中，RNAi通常通过产生发夹RNA的转基因来实现。对于作物的遗传改良，RNAi在效率和稳定性方面比反义介导的基因沉默和共抑制具有优势。它在以可控方式抑制多基因家族中的转基因表达的能力方面，也比基于突变的反向遗传学具有优势。
