RNAi

RNA interference (RNAi) with small interfering RNA (siRNA) has become a powerful tool in functional and medical genomic research through directed post-transcriptional gene silencing. In order to apply RNAi technique for eukaryotic organisms, where frequent alternative splicing results in diversification of mRNAs and finally of proteins, we need spliced mRNA isoform silencing to study the function of individual proteins.

Shared-usage high throughput screening (HTS) facilities are becoming more common in academe as large-scale small molecule and genome-scale RNAi screening strategies are adopted for basic research purposes. These shared facilities require a unique informatics infrastructure that must not only provide access to and analysis of screening data, but must also manage the administrative and technical challenges associated with conducting numerous, interleaved screening efforts run by multiple independent research groups.

High-throughput screening (HTS) is an indispensable tool for drug (target) discovery that currently lacks user-friendly software tools for the robust identification of putative hits from HTS experiments and for the interpretation of these findings in the context of systems biology. We developed HiTSeekR as a one-stop solution for chemical compound screens, siRNA knock-down and CRISPR/Cas9 knock-out screens, as well as microRNA inhibitor and -mimics screens.

RNA interference (RNAi) is a widely adopted tool for loss-of-function studies but RNAi results only have biological relevance if the reagents are appropriately mapped to genes. Several groups have designed and generated RNAi reagent libraries for studies in cells or in vivo for Drosophila and other species. At first glance, matching RNAi reagents to genes appears to be a simple problem, as each reagent is typically designed to target a single gene. In practice, however, the reagent-gene relationship is complex.