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Most Cited Journal Articles 2003-Chemistry

Following is a CAS database record representing a highly cited journal article.

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CAS subject entries for this document include: Animal cell line; HeLa cell; Gene therapy; and 2 additional concepts.

CAPLUS COPYRIGHT 2004 ACS on STN

TITLE:	Duplexes of 21-nucleotide RNAs mediate RNA interference in cultured mammalian cells
AUTHOR(S):	Elbashir, Sayda M.; Harborth, Jens; Lendeckel, Winfried; Yalcin, Abdullah; Weber, Klaus; Tuschl, Thomas
CORPORATE SOURCE:	Dep. of Cellular Biochem., Max-Planck-Inst. for Biophys. Chem., Gottingen, D-37077, Germany
SOURCE:	Nature (London, United Kingdom) (2001), 411(6836), 494-498 CODEN: NATUAS; ISSN: 0028-0836
PUBLISHER:	Nature Publishing Group
LANGUAGE:	English

ABSTRACT:
RNA interference (RNAi) is the process of sequence-specific, post-transcriptional gene silencing in animals and plants, initiated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) that is homologous in sequence to the silenced gene. The mediators of sequence-specific mRNA degrdn. are 21- and 22-nucleotide small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) generated by RNase III cleavage from longer dsRNAs. Here we show that 21-nucleotide siRNA duplexes specifically suppress expression of endogenous and heterologous genes in different mammalian cell lines, including human embryonic kidney (293) and HeLa cells. Therefore, 21-nucleotide siRNA duplexes provide a new tool for studying gene function in mammalian cells and may eventually be used as gene-specific therapeutics.