Li W, Cha L
Center of Computational Biology, Beijing Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 130(3), Beijing 100850, China.
Cell Mol Life Sci. 2007 Jul;64(14):1785-92. doi: 10.1007/s00018-007-7057-3.
Since the identification of RNA-mediated interference (RNAi) in 1998, RNAi has become an effective tool to inhibit gene expression. The inhibition mechanism is triggered by introducing a short interference double-stranded RNA (siRNA,19 approximately 27 bp) into the cytoplasm, where the guide strand of siRNA (usually antisense strand) binds to its target messenger RNA and the expression of the target gene is blocked. RNAi has been widely applied in gene functional analysis, and as a potential therapeutic strategy in viral diseases, drug target discovery, and cancer therapy. Among the factors which may compromise inhibition efficiency, how to design siRNAs with high efficiency and high specificity to its target gene is critical. Although many algorithms have been developed for this purpose, it is still difficult to design such siRNAs. In this review, we will briefly discuss prediction methods for siRNA efficiency and the problems of present approaches.
自1998年RNA介导的干扰（RNAi）被发现以来，RNAi已成为抑制基因表达的有效工具。其抑制机制是通过将短干扰双链RNA（siRNA，约19至27个碱基对）导入细胞质触发的，在细胞质中，siRNA的引导链（通常是反义链）与其靶信使RNA结合，从而阻断靶基因的表达。RNAi已广泛应用于基因功能分析，并作为一种潜在的治疗策略应用于病毒性疾病、药物靶点发现和癌症治疗。在可能影响抑制效率的因素中，如何设计对其靶基因具有高效率和高特异性的siRNA至关重要。尽管为此已经开发了许多算法，但设计这样的siRNA仍然很困难。在这篇综述中，我们将简要讨论siRNA效率的预测方法以及当前方法存在的问题。
