DMPQ- Recently RNA interference was in the news, what do you understand by the term RNAi and write down its application?

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The term RNA interference (RNAi) was coined to describe a cellular mechanism that uses the gene’s own DNA sequence of the gene to turn it off, a process that researchers call silencing. In a wide variety of organisms, including animals, plants, and fungi, RNAi is triggered by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA).

During RNAi, long dsRNA is cut or “diced” into small fragments ~21 nucleotides long by an enzyme called “Dicer”. These small fragments referred to as small interfering RNAs (siRNA), bind to proteins from a special family: the Argonaute proteins.

RNAi is widely used by researchers to silence genes in order to learn something about their function. siRNAs can be designed to match any

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gene, can be manufactured cheaply, and can be readily administered to cells. One can now order commercially synthesized siRNAs to silence virtually any gene in a human or other organism’s cell, dramatically accelerating the pace of biomedical research.

Furthermore, the ability to turn off the expression of a single gene makes RNAi an appealing therapeutic approach to treat infectious diseases or genetic disorders, such as those that result from the inappropriate and undesirable activity of a gene, as in many cancers and neurodegenerative diseases. There are currently several clinical trials testing the safety and effectiveness of siRNA drugs.

 

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