Much of what we know about gene interactions in development has been learned using nematodes, yeast, flies, and bacteria. This is due, in part, to the relative ease of genetic manipulation of these well-characterized genomes. However, of great interest are gene interactions involving complex diseases in humans. Wang and White [(2011). Nature Methods 8(4):341–346] describe work using RNAi to examine the interactive proteome in mammalian cells. They mention that knockdown inefficiencies and off-target effects of introduced RNAi species are areas that need particular improvement if the methodology is to be fruitful.

How might one use RNAi to study developmental pathways?

Video transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to today's video. So which of the following statements about RNA interference is correct. But remember from previous videos that RNA interference is a technique that is going to be used to the grade certain M RNA transcripts by doing so we're going to prevent translation. So it is a very effective technique in gene silencing knowing this. Let's go over each of our answer choices so that we may solve the problem. First of all, we have a, it involves interfering with the synthesis of RNA from D N A. Remember that this is transcription, we know that RNA interference is not going to be involved in the transcription process rather, it is going to be stopping the translation process, this is incorrect. So we're going to cancel this out. It involves interference with the synthesis of C D N A from RNA. And this involves the reverse transcriptase enzyme here. Again, this is not what RNA interference is going to be working with is going to be working with M RNA transcripts, not see DNA transcripts. So we're going to cancel this out. Finally, we have it involves interference with the translation of specific M RNA by complementary RNA. Well, this is actually going to be a true statement because RNA interference is going to take this specific M RNA transcript and is going to be degrading them doing so it is going to prevent translation from occurring. So we're going to highlight answer choice C as a correct answer to our question. I really hope this video helped you and I hope to see you on the next one.