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Selection of Chemical Modifications in the siRNA Seed Region That Repress Off-Target Effect
Yoshiaki Kobayashi1, Kengo Miyamoto2, Misako Aida2
1Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Abstract:
RNA interference mediated by small interfering RNA (siRNA) has been widely used as a procedure to knock down the expression of an intended target gene with perfect sequence complementarity. However, siRNA often exhibits off-target effects on genes with partial sequence complementarities. Such off-target effect is an undesirable adverse effect for knocking down a target gene specifically. Here we describe the powerful strategy to avoid off-target effects without affecting the RNAi activity by the introduction of DNA or 2'-O-methyl modifications in the siRNA seed region. These two types of chemical modifications repress off-target effects through different molecular mechanisms.
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