RNA interference silencing the transcriptional message: aspects and applications

RNA interference (RNAi) is silencing of gene expression by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) having complementary sequence to the target gene to be silenced. This phenomenon has transformed into a complete technology for functional genomic studies. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are 21- to 23-nucleotide dsRNAs, in which the sense strand is the same as the target mRNA and the antisense strand is the complement of the target mRNA sequence. These are the effector molecules for inducing RNAi, leading to posttranscriptional gene silencing with RNA-induced silencing complex. Besides siRNA, which can be chemically synthesized, various other systems in the form of potential effector molecules for posttranscriptional gene silencing are available, such as short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs), long dsRNAs, short temporal RNAs, and micro RNAs (miRNAs). These effector molecules either are processed into siRNA such as in the case of shRNA or directly aid gene silencing as in the case of miRNA. RNAi for various unknown genes may facilitate to elucidate inherited genetic diseases and provide drug candidates for viral and oncogenic diseases. This can be achieved by targeting mRNA from oncogenic genes or mRNA for viral cellular receptor and viral structural proteins for RNAi. In this article, we evaluate various aspects and applications of RNAi technology and provide comprehensive information for the system currently available for inducing RNAi.