Illuminating the host - how RNAi screens shed light on host-pathogen interactions

Over millions of years pathogens have coevolved with their respective hosts utilizing host cell functions for survival and replication. Despite remarkable progress in developing antibiotics and vaccination strategies in the last century, infectious diseases still remain a severe threat to human health. Meanwhile, genomic research offers a new era of data-generating platforms that will dramatically enhance our knowledge of pathogens and the diseases they cause. Improvements in gene knockdown studies by RNA interference (RNAi) combined with recent developments in instrumentation and image analysis enable the use of high-throughput screening approaches to elucidate host gene functions exploited by pathogens. Although only a few RNAi-based screens focusing on host genes have been reported so far, these studies have already uncovered hundreds of genes not previously known to be involved in pathogen infection. This review describes recent progress in RNAi screening approaches, highlighting both the limitations and the tremendous potential of RNAi-based screens for the identification of essential host cell factors during infection.