Respiratory Diseases

In the years since the discovery of RNA interference, researchers have found that this process is far more widespread than we might expect, and that small pieces of RNA play many functional roles. Small (or short) interfering RNA (siRNA) is the most commonly used RNA interference (RNAi) tool for inducing short-term silencing of protein coding genes. siRNAs are widely used to assess the individual contributions of genes to an assortment of cellular phenotypes including cytokinesis, apoptosis, insulin signaling and cell differentiation. siRNA screens have been used to identify novel pathways and have significant impact in validating targets for a number of cellular proc...