Open Biosystems said this week that it has launched the Expression Arrest zebrafish morpholino library, an antisense product for use in gene function analysis experiments in multicellular vertebrates.
According to the company, the library contains hundreds of zebrafish morpholinos designed and synthesized for immediate use. It was designed by Gene Tools and will be marketed exclusively by Open Biosystems, which said it intends to introduce morpholinos from other species in the future.
The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development released this week its Outlook 2004 report, which included a prediction that the use of RNA interference for the identification of therapeutic drug targets will increase this year.
The report also states that the US Food and Drug Administration will likely approve in the near future the first antisense drug for cancer.
Additional details can be found at http://csdd.tufts.edu.
Promega recently introduced the siStrike U6 hairpin cloning systems, which is a series of linearized plasmids designed for the cloning of hairpin target sequences for the expression of siRNA sequences in human cells.
According to the company, two short DNA oligonucleotides are synthesized and annealed to form a DNA insert that contains the hairpin siRNA target sequence. After annealing, the oligonucleotide forms ends that are compatible with the linearized siStrike vector ends and facilitate a sticky-end ligation.
“The plasmids contain the human U6 promoter, which is recognized by RNA polymerase III,” Promega added. “Once transfected, RNA polymerase III transcribes the hairpin target sequences to generate hairpin siRNAs in vivo. This RNA hairpin then interacts with RISC resulting in RNA interference.”
Details about the hairpin cloning system can be found at http://www.promega.com/catalog/CatalogProducts.asp?catalog%
5Fname=Promega%5FProducts&category%5Fname=siSTRIKE+
U6+Hairpin+Cloning+Systems&description%5Ftext=siSTRIKE%
26%23x2122%3B+U6+Hairpin+Cloning+Systems.