Introducing Santa Cruz Biotechnology Inc.'s Post Transcriptional siRNA Gene Silencers.

RNA Interference (RNAi) is one of the most exciting discoveries of the past decade in functional genomics and proteomics. While first recognized in plants as a response to transgene expression, it is now clear that RNAi is utilized by most eukaryotes in vivo for anti-viral defense, transposon activity modulation or gene regulation, and has rapidly become an important research tool for gene silencing.
In mammalian cells, introduction of long dsRNA (>30 nucleotides) initiates a potent anti-viral response, exemplified by nonspecific inhibition of protein synthesis and RNA degradation. The mammalian anti-viral response can be bypassed, however, by the introduction of siRNAs. Santa Cruz Biotechnology, Inc. is currently offering over 10,280 target-specific 19-25 nucleotide siRNAs that can be used to knockdown protein expression in a broad variety of mammalian cell types.
Long double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs; typically >200 nucleotides) can be used to silence the expression of target genes in a variety of organisms and cell types. Upon introduction, the long dsRNAs enter a cellular pathway that is commonly referred to as the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway. First, the dsRNAs get processed by a RNase III-like enzyme called Dicer into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), short RNA duplexes of 19-21 nucleotides with two nucleotide 3' overhangs on each strand. Then, the siRNAs assemble into endoribonuclease-containing complexes known as RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISCs), unwinding in the process. Activated RISCs subsequently bind to complementary transcripts by base pairing interactions between the siRNA anti-sense strand and complementary mRNA. The bound mRNA is cleaved and sequence specific degradation of mRNA results in gene silencing.


cytochrome c siRNA (h): sc-29292. Immunofluorescence staining of methanol-fixed, control HeLa (A) and cytochrome c siRNA silenced HeLa (B) cells showing diminished cytoplasmic staining in the siRNA silenced cells. Cells probed with cytochrome c (7H8): sc-13560.