Title

RNAi and RNAa - The Yin and Yang of RNAome

Authors

Peter Natesan Pushparaj ^1,*, Jude J Aarthi¹, Srinivasan D Kumar², Jayapal Manikandan¹

Affiliation

¹Department of Physiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore-119260; ²Department of Anatomy, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore-119260

Email

phspnp@nus.edu.sg

Phone

+65-90103795; * Corresponding author

Article Type

Views & Challenges

Date

received December 22, 2007; revised December 26, 2007; accepted January 02, 2008; published online January 11, 2008

RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful technology with huge applications for functional genomics, target identification in drug discovery and elucidation of molecular signaling pathways. Current RNAi studies have demonstrated the clinical potential of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) in metabolic diseases, cancer, AIDS, malaria, neurodegenerative disorders, dental diseases and other illnesses. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the small RNA molecules, either indigenously produced as microRNAs (miRNAs) or exogenously administered synthetic dsRNAs could effectively activate a particular gene in a sequence specific manner instead of silencing it. This novel, but still uncharacterized, phenomenon has been termed as RNA activation (RNAa). The paradoxical concept of Yin and Yang, which describe two primal opposing but complementary principles, can potentially be applied to elucidate the complex phenomenon of RNAa/RNAi in the RNAome. This warrants a proper understanding of the RNAi/RNAa molecular pathways in living organisms before any of the small dsRNAs can potentially be exploited for therapeutics in human beings.

RNA interference; RNA activation; Yin and Yang; RNAome; small interfering RNA; gene silencing; functional genomics; drug discovery; therapeutics

Citation

Pushparaj et al., Bioinformation 2(6): 235-237 (2008)

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.