Discussions

Different genetic techniques are in operation to investigate the functioning of genes within living biological systems. Gene knockdown is an experimental procedure that reduces or suppresses the expression of a particular gene or genes in an organism. RNA interference (RNAi) has become a widely used approach to perform gene knockdown experiments in cell cultures and, more recently, in transgenic animals. Gene silencing is the common definition of gene knockdown. Two types of small ribonucleic acid (sRNA) molecules, small interfering RNA (siRNA) and micro-RNA (miRNA), are central to RNAi. The primary use of this strategy is to investigate the role of a particular gene in the biological system.