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Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on June 18, 2007
Nucleic Acids Research 2007 35(13):4322-4330; doi:10.1093/nar/gkm437
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2007, Vol. 35, No. 13 4322-4330
© 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.


RNA

A systematic analysis of the effect of target RNA structure on RNA interference

Ellen M. Westerhout and Ben Berkhout*

Laboratory of Experimental Virology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Center for Infection and Immunity Amsterdam (CINIMA), Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +31 20 566 4822; Fax: +31 20 691 6531; Email: b.berkhout{at}amc.uva.nl

Received January 9, 2007. Revised May 16, 2007. Accepted May 16, 2007.

RNAi efficiency is influenced by local RNA structure of the target sequence. We studied this structure-based resistance in detail by targeting a perfect RNA hairpin and subsequently destabilized its tight structure by mutation, thereby gradually exposing the target sequence. Although the tightest RNA hairpins were completely resistant to RNAi, we observed an inverse correlation between the overall target hairpin stability and RNAi efficiency within a specific thermodynamic stability ({Delta}G) range. Increased RNAi efficiency was shown to be caused by improved binding of the siRNA to the destabilized target RNA hairpins. The mutational effects vary for different target regions. We find an accessible target 3' end to be most important for RNAi-mediated inhibition. However, these 3' end effects cannot be reproduced in siRNA-target RNA-binding studies in vitro, indicating the important role of RISC components in the in vivo RNAi reaction. The results provide a more detailed insight into the impact of target RNA structure on RNAi and we discuss several possible implications. With respect to lentiviral-mediated delivery of shRNA expression cassettes, we present a {Delta}G window to destabilize the shRNA insert for vector improvement, while avoiding RNAi-mediated self-targeting during lentiviral vector production.


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