Hofacker Ivo L, Tafer Hakim
Institute for Theoretical Chemistry, University Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Methods Mol Biol. 2010;623:137-54. doi: 10.1007/978-1-60761-588-0_9.
RNA interference, mediated by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), is a powerful tool for investigation of gene functions and it is increasingly being used as a therapeutic agent. However, not all siRNAs are equally potent - although simple rules for the selection of good siRNAs were proposed early on, siRNAs are still plagued with widely fluctuating efficiency. Recently, new design tools that incorporate both the structural features of the targeted RNAs and the sequence features of the siRNAs have substantially improved the efficacy of siRNAs. In this chapter, we present the algorithms behind these accessibility-aided tools and show how to design efficient siRNAs with their help.
由小干扰RNA（siRNA）介导的RNA干扰是研究基因功能的强大工具，并且越来越多地被用作治疗剂。然而，并非所有的siRNA都具有同等效力——尽管早期就提出了选择优质siRNA的简单规则，但siRNA的效率仍存在很大波动。最近，结合了靶向RNA的结构特征和siRNA的序列特征的新设计工具已大幅提高了siRNA的效力。在本章中，我们介绍了这些可及性辅助工具背后的算法，并展示如何借助它们设计高效的siRNA。
