RNA Interference Induced by the Cationic Lipid Delivery of siRNA

Recent discoveries demonstrate that the introduction of synthetically prepared duplexes of 19-21 bp short interfering RNAs (siRNA) into mammalian cells results in the cleavage of target mRNA leading to post transcriptional gene silencing [1]. Our work focuses on the cationic-lipid (CL) mediated delivery of siRNA into mammalian cell lines in an approach similar to CL based gene delivery [2]. Co-transfection of a target and a non-target reporter plasmid followed by the CL delivery of a sequence specific siRNA allows us to probe the silencing efficiency (SE) of the target plasmid relative to non-specific silencing of both plasmids. We have created a phase diagram for SE as a function of the complex membrane charge density and as a function of the CL:siRNA charge ratio. X-ray diffraction was performed to probe the structure of the complexes at points along the phase diagram. Funding provided by NIH AI-12520, AI-20611 and GM-59288. [1] Elbashir et. al., Nature, 411 494-498 (2001) [2] Ewert et. al., Curr. Med. Chem. 11 133-149 (2004)