Preparation of dsRNA for microinjection experiments in mouse

RNA interference (RNAi) is a suitable method for sequence-specific post-transcriptional gene silencing for a number of model systems. The protocol presented here is designed for the preparation of microgram amounts of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) for microinjection experiments in mouse oocytes and early embryos. Briefly, dsRNA is produced after annealing sense and antisense RNA strands, or spontaneously during in vitro transcription of an inverted repeat. We usually include RNase T1 treatment of the annealed RNA prior to the purification step in order to remove unannealed single-stranded RNA (ssRNA), which can interfere with the quantification of dsRNA in a nondenaturing agarose gel.