RNAi is used routinely in nematodes and flies, while siRNA methods have become prevalent in mammalian cell culture as well as in mice. There is no obvious reason why it should not be possible to use siRNA methods in zebrafish. This would be especially useful to achieve tissue-specific knockdown.
Anecdotally, many labs have tried various approaches to RNAi, though apparently without any solid success to date. Hazel Sive's lab is trying an siRNA-based method, and Hazel has offered to lead an online discussion about this. She is planning to set up a blog for this soon, and we will post the URL here.
2 comments:
Assuming we and/or others get RNAi to work, we will need fish RNAi sequence collections for every gene. We can discuss logistics of this if there is time.
(Hazel emailed me this comment and I have paraphrased and posted it in her name. --Chi-Bin)
Our lab is interested in RNAi against specific genes in specific tissues, so having promoter libraries available would be handy (just as for misexpression of genes). Mostly, we just want to know if and how well it works!
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