Published online 30 January 2004
Nucleic Acids Research, 2004, Vol. 32, No. 2 661-668
© 2004 Oxford University Press
Targeting Alzheimers disease genes with RNA interference: an efficient strategy for silencing mutant alleles
1 Department of Neurology, 2 Graduate Program in Genetics, 3 Departments of Internal Medicine and 4 Physiology and Biophysics, University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
*To whom correspondence should be addressed at Department of Neurology, University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, 2007 RCP, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Tel: +1 319 335 8696; Fax: +1 319 335 7173; Email: henry-paulson{at}uiowa.edu
Tau and amyloid precursor protein (APP) are key proteins in the pathogenesis of sporadic and inherited Alzheimers disease. Thus, developing ways to inhibit production of these proteins is of great research and therapeutic interest. The selective silencing of mutant alleles, moreover, represents an attractive strategy for treating inherited dementias and other dominantly inherited disorders. Here, using tau and APP as model targets, we describe an efficient method for producing small interfering RNA (siRNA) against essentially any targeted region of a gene. We then use this approach to develop siRNAs that display optimal allele-specific silencing against a well-characterized tau mutation (V337M) and the most widely studied APP mutation (APPsw). The allele-specific RNA duplexes identified by this method then served as templates for constructing short hairpin RNA (shRNA) plasmids that successfully silenced mutant tau or APP alleles. These plasmids should prove useful in experimental and therapeutic studies of Alzheimers disease. Our results suggest guiding principles for the production of allele-specific siRNA, and the general method described here should facilitate the production of gene-specific siRNAs.
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