Insecticidal RNA interference, thinking beyond long dsRNA

Injection of dsRNA into Drosophila Embryos for RNA Interference (RNAi).

INTRODUCTIONRNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful method for determining the role of specific genes during Drosophila embryogenesis. This protocol describes a technique by which Drosophila embryos can be injected with dsRNA in order to disrupt targeted gene function. The approach is straightforward, utilizing improved methods for injecting the dsRNA directly through the chorion of the embryo. T...

Plant science. Insecticidal RNA, the long and short of it.

Enhancement of RNA Interference Effect in P19 EC Cells by an RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase

Background: RNA interference (RNAi) is a phenomenon uses double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to specifically inhibit gene expression. The non-specific silencing caused by interferon response to dsRNA in mammalian cells limits the potential of utilizing RNAi to study gene function. Duplexes of 21-nucleotide short interfering dsRNA (siRNA) inhibit gene expression by RNAi. In some organisms, siRNA can als...

Specific RNA Interference in Caenorhabditis elegans by Ingested dsRNA Expressed in Bacillus subtilis

In nematodes, genome-wide RNAi-screening has been widely used as a rapid and efficient method to identify genes involved in the aging processes. By far the easiest way of inducing RNA interference (RNAi) in Caenorhabditis elegans is by feeding Escherichia coli that expresses specific double stranded RNA (dsRNA) to knockdown translation of targeted mRNAs. However, it has been shown that E. coli ...

Thinking beyond detoxification

The cytochrome P450-dependent monooxygenases are an extremely important metabolic system involved in the metabolism of xenobiotics and endogenous compounds. The number of P450s in a given insect species currently ranges from 48 in Apis mellifera to 164 in Aedes aegypti. For nearly forty years studies of insect P450s have focused primarily on metabolism of xenobiotics, including studies of insec...