Sigma-Aldrich has announced the release of Mission esiRNA, a pool of gene-specific siRNA that provides a novel approach to RNAi screening in mammalian cells.
Mission esiRNA incorporates a pool of hundreds of siRNAs against a single gene target.
The tool is designed to eliminate the trial-and-error approach of identifying a single siRNA for gene knockdown and ensures minimal off-target effects.
The company said the technique offers a number of benefits over the traditional approach to single-siRNA gene knockdown.
By targeting each gene target with a 'super-pool' of siRNA, the trial-and-error approach of identifying a useful single siRNA is eliminated.
In addition, the approach should ensure minimal risk of off-target effects and enables the use of one assay per gene.
Development of the esiRNA approach was supported by the German BMBF programme Go-Bio and developed by the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany.
EsiRNA are endoribonuclease-prepared siRNAs synthesised by in-vitro transcription of a 300-600-bp gene specific double-stranded RNA, followed by enzymatic digestion.
This collection of siRNA-like molecules is then purified, resulting in a complex pool of siRNA molecules all targeting different sequences of a single gene.
