New method powerfully boosts efficiency of RNA interference (RNAi) in shutting down genes
Thursday, February 24, 2011 - 13:30
in Biology & Nature
A research team led by scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has developed a powerful method that allows them to sift through thousands of candidate hairpin-shaped RNA molecules at a time and pull out only those RNAs that potently shut down the activity of a target gene. This accomplishment will now allow biologists to fully exploit RNA interference (RNAi), a natural cellular mechanism that has already been co-opted by scientists for myriad purposes such as hunting for cancer genes, stopping viral infections and more recently, treating diseases in clinical trials.