Prof.Sukru Tüzmen
To A classical technique to determine the function of a gene is to experimentally inhibit its gene expression in orderto examine the resulting phenotype or effect on molecular endpoints and signalling pathways.RNA interference (RNAi) is one of the recent discoveries of a naturally occurring mechanism of gene regulationfacilitated by the induction of double stranded RNA into a cell. Synthetic short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can be designed to silence the expression of specific genes bearing a particular target sequence and may potentially be presented as a therapeutic strategy for inhibiting transcriptional regulation of genes, which in such instances constitute a more attractive strategy than small molecule drugs. Commercially available RNAi libraries have made high-throughput genome- scale screening a feasible methodology for studying complex mammalian cell systems.
However, it is crucial that any observed phenotypic change be confirmed at either the mRNA and/or protein level to determine the validity of the targeted genes.