Said to be the best new tool for fulfilling the promise of the Human Genome Project by enabling the efficient identification and functional characterisation of novel disease-relevant genes
Ambion and Cenix BioScience have announced that siRNA designs are now complete for more than 98% of all human, mouse, and rat genes listed in the public RefSeq database.
These siRNAs are said to promise to be the best new tool for fulfilling the promise of the Human Genome Project by enabling the efficient identification and functional characterisation of novel disease-relevant genes.
The siRNA designs were created using a proprietary algorithm developed by Cenix that predicts potent and specific siRNA sequences with a high degree of accuracy.
This algorithm utilises Cenix's expertise gained from generating genome-wide RNAi libraries for C elegans and Drosophila, plus extensive testing in mammalian cell systems.
The efficacy of the optimised siRNA design algorithm was tested on multiple siRNAs per gene, targeting hundreds of different genes.
These pre-designed siRNAs are now being offered to the research community, eliminating the need for individual researchers to deal with complicated siRNA design tools and allowing them to rapidly obtain multiple siRNAs for each gene of interest.
Ambion is commercialising these designs by offering chemically synthesised siRNAs corresponding to eachl of these designs.
These siRNAs are being offered both individually and as pre-defined libraries of siRNAs.
Ambion has established the high throughput manufacturing capacity necessary to produce thousands of siRNAs of the highest quality to serve the research market.
The company also has the ability to synthesise gram quantities of siRNA under ISO and cGMP standards. Matt Winkler, CEO and CSO of Ambion, commented, "The power of these pre-designed siRNAs is that it permits all researchers to perform siRNA experiments immediately.
"RNAi is revolutionising the pace of basic biological research, from the dissection of signaling pathways to the detailed determination of gene function".
"The availability of these pre-designed siRNAs greatly reduces the research community's entry barrier of entry for genome-scale RNAi experimentation in mammalian cells," Christophe Echeverri, CEO of Cenix BioScience stated.
"We are particularly excited to finally address the numerous requests we have received over the last year for these powerful reagents from both academic and industry laboratories".
RNA interference, or RNAi, is a powerful new approach for achieving targeted gene silencing of disease-associated genes using double stranded RNA (dsRNA) as the triggering agent.
Discovered in 1998, this technology has been shown to work in a wide range of animal models, and was voted the top scientific achievement of 2002 by Science Magazine.
RNAi is a naturally occurring, highly catalytic gene regulation system, thought to have evolved primarily as a defense mechanism against molecular pathogens.
Used as a research tool and potential therapeutic, RNAi offers an unprecedented combination of high potency, specificity and scalability, wide cross species applicability, and excellent experimental reproducibility.
As a result, RNAi has rapidly become the new method of choice, replacing conventional antisense and ribozyme technologies, to determine gene functions for a wide range of biomedical applications.
