Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Free energy lights the path toward more effective RNAi

Silencing gene expression by RNA interference (RNAi) has become a daily activity for mammalian cell biologists. Those who often use this approach have come to appreciate its occasional frustrations and potential limitations. A pair of recent papers in Cell provides rules for designing short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that are both validated at the practical level and understood mechanistically.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Doing it the natural way.
Figure 2: Habits of highly effective siRNAs.

References

  1. Hannon, G.J. Nature 418, 244–251 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Nykanen, A., Haley, B. & Zamore, P.D. Cell 107, 309–321 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Schwarz, D.S., Hutvagner, G., Haley, B. & Zamore, P.D. Mol. Cell 10, 537–548 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Martinez, J., Patkaniowska, A., Urlaub, H., Luhrmann, R. & Tuschl, T. Cell 110, 563–574 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Elbashir, S.M. et al. Nature 411, 494–498 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Caplen, N.J., Parrish, S., Imani, F., Fire, A. & Morgan, R.A. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98, 9742–9747 (2001).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Khvorova, A., Reynolds, A. & Jayasena, S.D. Cell 115, 209–216 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Schwarz, D.S. et al. Cell 115, 199–208 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Lee, Y. et al. Nature 425, 415–419 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Turner, D.H. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 6, 299–304 (1996).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Griffiths-Jones, S., Bateman, A., Marshall, M., Khanna, A. & Eddy, S.R. Nucleic Acids Res. 31, 439–441 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Silva, J., Sachidanandam, R. & Hannon, G. Free energy lights the path toward more effective RNAi. Nat Genet 35, 303–305 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1203-303

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1203-303

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing