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Predicting Gene Silencing Through the Spatiotemporal Control of siRNA Release from Photo-responsive Polymeric Nanocarriers
Published on: July 21, 2017
Artificial Control of Gene Silencing Activity Based on siRNA Conjugation with Polymeric Molecule Having Coil-Globule
Noor Faizah Che Harun1, Hiroyasu Takemoto1, Takahiro Nomoto1
1Laboratory for Chemistry and Life Science, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology , R1-11, 4259, Nagatsuta, Midori-Ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 226-8503, Japan.
Abstract:
A new strategy for controlling gene silencing activity of siRNA in the cell was developed in the present study. siRNA was linearly conjugated with PNIPAAm, where coil-globule transition of the conjugated PNIPAAm allows thermoresponsive exposure of the vicinal siRNA molecule; a coil form of PNIPAAm (T < LCST) inhibits siRNA interaction with gene silencing-related proteins due to the steric hindrance effect, while a globule form of PNIPAAm (T > LCST) allows a ready access of siRNA to gene silencing pathway. As a result, at T > LCST, PNIPAAm-siRNA elicited effective association of siRNA with a gene silencing-related protein of Ago2, while siRNA recruitment into the gene silencing pathway was significantly suppressed at T < LCST. Ultimately, gene silencing efficacy of PNIPAAm-siRNA was close to unconjugated siRNA at T > LCST (∼80%), while it was dramatically decreased to ∼20% at T < LCST, suggesting that coil-globule transition of the conjugated polymer can control the bioactivity of the vicinal siRNA molecule.
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