Experimental RNA drug may cause blindness

lavrock submitted, created time 4 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

Caution needed in clinical trials, scientists urge.

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: macular degeneration side effects RNA therapy RNA drugs blindness siRNA RNA

Coupling of Double-Stranded RNA Synthesis and siRNA Generation

jerry submitted, created time 7 months 4 days (www.sciencedirect.com)

A new study shows that heterochromatic dsRNA synthesis and siRNA generation are physically coupled processes. This coupling has implications for cis-restriction of siRNA-mediated heterochromatin assembly and for mechanisms that give rise to siRNA strand polarity.

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: dsRNA double-stranded RNA siRNA RNAi RNA interference short interfering RNA

Genome-wide analysis for discovery of rice microRNAs reveals natural antisense microRNAs (nat-miRNAs)

davidd submitted, created time 9 months 1 week (www.pnas.org)

Small RNAs (21–24 nt) are involved in gene regulation through translation inhibition, mRNA cleavage, or directing chromatin modifications. At least five classes of these small regulatory RNAs (21–24 nt) have been characterized. miRNA and siRNA is reported frquently. However, the natural antisense miRNAs (nat-miRNAs) have not been reported in any system.

10 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: crop plants gene regulation agriculture rice miRNA RNA small RNA siRNA nat-miRNAs

Triumphs and tribulations for RNA interference

Knockdown of TNFR1 by the sense strand of an ICAM-1 siRNA: dissection of an off-target effect

davidd submitted, created time 10 months 6 days (nar.oxfordjournals.org)

This may be the first example in which the off-target effect of an siRNA is actually responsible for the anticipated effect by acting to reduce expression of a protein (TNFR1) that normally regulates expression of the intended target (ICAM-1).

1 comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: knockdown gene knockdown gene expression gene regulation off-target effects TNFR1 siRNA

Self-assembled lamellar complexes of siRNA with lipidic aminoglycoside derivatives promote efficient siRNA delivery and interference

bianjie submitted, created time 1 year 2 months (www.pnas.org)

RNA interference requires efficient delivery of small double-stranded RNA molecules into the target cells and their subsequent incorporation into RNA-induced silencing complexes. Although current cationic lipids commonly used for DNA transfection have also been used for siRNA transfection, a clear need still exists for better siRNA delivery to improve the gene silencing efficiency.

3 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: siRNA RNA interference siRNA transfection

Heterozygous Disruption of the PTEN Promotes Intestinal Neoplasia in APCmin/+ Mouse: Roles of Osteopontin

jiangyun submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (carcin.oxfordjournals.org)

our results suggest that the PI3K pathway promotes the transformation of intestinal adenoma to adenocarcinoma. Osteopontin, a downstream effector of PI3K, protects transformed intestinal epithelial cells from programmed cell death and stimulates their anchorage-independent growth.

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Dynamic PolyConjugates for targeted in vivo delivery of siRNA to hepatocytes

bianjie submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.pnas.org)

Achieving efficient in vivo delivery of siRNA to the appropriate target cell would be a major advance in the use of RNAi in gene function studies and as a therapeutic modality.

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RNA Interference against MDR1 but not MRP1 Reverses Drug Resistance in Human Small-Cell Lung Cancer Cells

RNA Helicase A Interacts with RISC in Human Cells and Functions in RISC Loading

Reviver submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.molecule.org)

"RNA interference is a conserved pathway of sequence-specific gene silencing that depends on small guide RNAs and the action of proteins assembled in the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). Minimally, the action of RISC requires the endonucleolytic slicer activity of Argonaute2 (Ago2) directed to RNA targets whose sequences are complementary to RISC-incorporated small RNA. To identify RISC components in human cells, researchers developed an affinity-purification strategy to isolate siRNA-programmed RISC

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Application of siRNA Library in High-Throughput Genetic Screens of Mammalian Cells

MedUnion submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.mupnet.com)

Small interfering (si)RNA directs gene-specific silencing in both model organisms and mammalian cells through RNA interference. The discovery of this phenomenon has provided a valuable tool to study loss-of-function phenotype of gene. The most recent breakthrough in the generation of large-scale mammalian siRNA libraries further moves forward the application of RNA interference, providing a powerful platform to carry out phenotype-based large-scale genome-wide screen in mammalian cells

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HIV must face a new enemy

DanyC submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.newscientist.com)

Carbon nanotubes have been used to smuggle HIV-blocking molecules into human cells.The hard part is getting siRNA into T-cells. Now Hongjie Dai and colleagues at Stanford University in California have attached siRNA to carbon nanotubes, which penetrate T-cell membranes and deposit the siRNA inside the cells.

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