Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) or RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful tool for silencing gene expression. This mechanism was initially considered as a strange phenomenon limited to few plant species. It has become clear that PTGS occurs in both plants and animals and has roles in viral defense and transposon silencing mechanisms. However, the use of RNA interference triggered by the introduction of small double-stranded RNA (dsRNA or siRNA) into mammalian cells as a tool to knock down expression of specific genes holds the promise to selectively inhibit expression of disease-associated genes in humans. On the other hand, there are about 40,000 protein-coding genes in the human genome, but the function of most of them remains unknown. RNAi technology has now been developed for systematically deciphering the functions and interactions of these thousands of genes.
Copyright John Libbey Eurotext 2003.