Question

how can gene silencing be beneficial as a treatment for diseases?

Answer 1

Gene silencing is the process of regulation of gene expression to prevent the expression of certain genes. Gene silencing is often used in research. In particular, methods used to silence genes are being increasinglyused to produce therapeutic to combat cancer and other diseases such as infectious diseases and neurodegenerative disorders. The expression of genes get reduced when they are silenced.gene silencing is better than gene knockouts since they allow researchers to study essential genes that are required for the animal models to survive and cannot be removed. In addition they provide a more complete view on the development of diseases.

Gene silencing have been widely used to study genes associated with disorders these disorders include cancer infectious diseases respiratory diseases and neurodegenerative disorders gene silencing also currently being used in drug Discovery efforts .

RNA interference has been used to silence genes associated with cancers. RNA interference can also be used to target specific mutants.researches have also used siRNA to selectively reduce the expression of Cancer related genes and the apoptotic proteins such as clusterin and survivin are often expressed in Cancer cells. clusterin and survivin targeting si r n is where used to reduce the number of anti-apoptoticproteins and thus increase the sensitivity of the cancer cells to chemotherapy treatments.

In virus infections : viral genes and host genes that are required for the replication of viruses play an important role in the life cycle of virus are often targeted by antiviral therapies. RNA interference has been used to target genes in several viral diseases including HIV and hepatitis. The technique allows the silencing of primary HIV receptor in human peripheral blood lymphocytes thus preventing the virus from entering human blood cells. RNA silencing was used to target the surface antigen on the hepatitis b virus and threat to a decrease in the number of viral components.

Bacterial infections: bacteria replicate outside of the host cell and are not acceptable to silencing by si RNA. However these infections can still be supressed by targeting the hosts genes that are involved in the immune response caused by the infection or by targeting the host genes involved in mediating the entry of bacteria into cells.

Respiratory diseases:RNA interference have been used to target Mr any molecules involved in asthma these experiments have suggested thatgene silencing using si RNA may be used to combat other respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease fiband cysticr fibrosis