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Title

Design of potential siRNA molecules for T antigen gene silencing of Merkel Cell Polyomavirus

 

Authors

Kazi Muhammad Ahasanul Hoque*, Md Faisal Azim, M Robin Mia, Rafidin Kayesh, Md Hazrat Ali, Md Jahidul Islam, Shahriar Kabir Shakil & Tonmay Modak Shuvra

 

Affiliation

Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh.

 

Email

shaown9009@gmail.com; *Corresponding author

 

Article Type

Hypothesis

 

Date

Received September 13, 2012; Accepted September 19, 2012; Published October 01, 2012

 

Abstract

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is the most aggressive skin cancer. Recently, it was demonstrated that human Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV) is clonally integrated in 80% of MCC tumors. Genetic studies of MCV have shown that T antigen protein is responsible for replication of genome and play a foremost role in viral infection. Therefore, T antigen protein may be used as suitable target for disease diagnosis. Viral activity can be restrained through RNA interference (RNAi) technology, an influential method for post transcriptional gene silencing in a sequence specific manner. In current study four effective siRNA molecules for silencing of MCV were rationally designed and validated using computational methods, which may lead to knockdown the activity of virus. Thus, this approach may provide an insight for the chemical synthesis of antiviral RNA molecule for the treatment of MCC at genome level.

 

Keywords

MCC, MCV, T antigen, RNAi, siRNA, Thermodynamics

 

Citation

Hoque et al. Bioinformation 8(19): 924-930 (2012)
 

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.