Skip Navigation


Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on December 10, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research 2008 36(2):640-647; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm920
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow Print PDF (135K) Freely available
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
36/2/640    most recent
gkm920v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (8)
Right arrow Commercial Re-use Guidelines
for Open Access NAR Content
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Lu, Z. J.
Right arrow Articles by Mathews, D. H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Lu, Z. J.
Right arrow Articles by Mathews, D. H.
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

Nucleic Acids Research, 2008, Vol. 36, No. 2 640-647
© 2007 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Computational Biology

Efficient siRNA selection using hybridization thermodynamics

Zhi John Lu1 and David H. Mathews1,2,*

1Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics and 2Department of Biostatistics & Computational Biology, University of Rochester Medical Center, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Box 712, Rochester, NY 14642, USA

*To whom correspondence may be addressed. Tel: 585 275 1734; Fax: 585 275 6007; Email: david_mathews{at}urmc.rochester.edu

Received August 28, 2007. Revised October 8, 2007. Accepted October 9, 2007.

Small interfering RNA (siRNA) are widely used to infer gene function. Here, insights in the equilibrium of siRNA-target hybridization are used for selection of efficient siRNA. The accessibilities of siRNA and target mRNA for hybridization, as measured by folding free energy change, are shown to be significantly correlated with efficacy. For this study, a partition function calculation that considers all possible secondary structures is used to predict target site accessibility; a significant improvement over calculations that consider only the predicted lowest free energy structure or a set of low free energy structures. The predicted thermodynamic features, in addition to siRNA sequence features, are used as input for a support vector machine that selects functional siRNA. The method works well for predicting efficient siRNA (efficacy >70%) in a large siRNA data set from Novartis. The positive predictive value (percentage of sites predicted to be efficient for silencing that are) is as high as 87.6%. The sensitivity and specificity are 22.7 and 96.5%, respectively. When tested on data from different sources, the positive predictive value increased 8.1% by adding equilibrium terms to 25 local sequence features. Prediction of hybridization affinity using partition functions is now available in the RNAstructure software package.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
Nucleic Acids ResHome page
X. Wang, X. Wang, R. K. Varma, L. Beauchamp, S. Magdaleno, and T. J. Sendera
Selection of hyperfunctional siRNAs with improved potency and specificity
Nucleic Acids Res., October 21, 2009; (2009) gkp864v1.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
BioinformaticsHome page
J. W. Klingelhoefer, L. Moutsianas, and C. Holmes
Approximate Bayesian feature selection on a large meta-dataset offers novel insights on factors that effect siRNA potency
Bioinformatics, July 1, 2009; 25(13): 1594 - 1601.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USAHome page
K. E. Deigan, T. W. Li, D. H. Mathews, and K. M. Weeks
Accurate SHAPE-directed RNA structure determination
PNAS, January 6, 2009; 106(1): 97 - 102.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Nucleic Acids ResHome page
Z. J. Lu and D. H. Mathews
OligoWalk: an online siRNA design tool utilizing hybridization thermodynamics
Nucleic Acids Res., July 1, 2008; 36(suppl_2): W104 - W108.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Home page
Nucleic Acids ResHome page
Z. J. Lu and D. H. Mathews
Fundamental differences in the equilibrium considerations for siRNA and antisense oligodeoxynucleotide design
Nucleic Acids Res., June 1, 2008; 36(11): 3738 - 3745.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]



Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.