A steric-blocking Morpholino antisense oligo can block Drosha cleavage, block Dicer cleavage, block Risc loading and block the ability of the mature miRNA to bind to its target
MicroRNAs suppress expression of many genes, but until now the tools for blocking miRNA function have not been optimal.
To remedy this, Gene Tools is now introducing custom-synthesised chemical tools to thoroughly block any selected microRNA.
Using a new targeting technique, a single Morpholino oligo can block multiple steps in the maturation and activity of an miRNA, strongly knocking down its function.
A steric-blocking Morpholino antisense oligo can block Drosha cleavage, block Dicer cleavage, block Risc loading and block the ability of the mature miRNA to bind to its target.
By lengthening a Morpholino to 31 bases, one end of the oligo can nucleate pairing in the single-stranded loop of a primary or pre-miRNA, facilitating invasion of the double-stranded miRNA stem, while the rest of the Morpholino extends across the miRNA sequence and overlaps the Drosha cleavage site.
"MicroRNA are important in development and tissue specification and are being shown to participate in many regulatory processes.
"Our Multi-blocking Morpholinos provide a convenient tool to knock down miRNA activity and so help determine the roles of an miRNA in biological processes" says Jon Moulton, miRNA project leader with Gene Tools.
Gene Tools manufactures custom-sequence Morpholino oligos for gene knockdown, splice modification and miRNA knockdown, as well as ancillary products for cellular delivery of Morpholinos.
By spring of 2006, over 1275 scientific papers have been published describing experiments using Morpholino oligos.
