Use of siRNA in dental tissue-derived cell cultures: integrin knockdown in fibroblasts.

Short (or small) interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are double-stranded RNA molecules about 21-25 nucleotides long that have the capacity to disrupt the activity of genes on a posttranscriptional level. This sequence homology-driven gene silencing capacity has been utilized by researchers to selectively block the translation of mRNA to proteins in order to study specific gene functions and identify target molecules. Importantly, siRNAs have the potential to be used in treatment of disease. Here, we describe how the siRNA technology can be used to knock down genes in dental tissue-derived cells using integrin α11 knockdown as an example.