shRNA-based gene Knockdown

Efficient and Specific Gene Knockdown

RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process where RNA molecules are used to inhibit gene expression. Typically, short RNA molecules are created that are complementary to endogenous mRNA and when introduced into cells, bind to the target mRNA. Binding of the short RNA molecule to the target mRNA functionally inactivates the target mRNA and sometimes leads to degradation of the target mRNA.

Small hairpin RNAs (shRNA) are sequences of RNA, typically about 80 base pairs in length, that include a region of internal hybridization that creates a hairpin structure. shRNA molecules are processed within the cell to form siRNA which in turn knock down gene expression. The benefit of shRNA is that they can be incorporated into plasmid vectors and integrated into genomic DNA for longer-term or stable expression, and thus longer knockdown of the target mRNA.