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Jia X, Han Q, Lu Z. Constructing the boundary between potent and ineffective siRNAs by MG-algorithm with C-features. BMC Bioinformatics 2022; 23:337. [PMID: 35963993 PMCID: PMC9375269 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-022-04867-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/08/2020] [Accepted: 07/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND In siRNA based antiviral therapeutics, selection of potent siRNAs is an indispensable step, but these commonly used features are unable to construct the boundary between potent and ineffective siRNAs. RESULTS Here, we select potent siRNAs by removing ineffective ones, where these conditions for removals are constructed by C-features of siRNAs, C-features are generated by MG-algorithm, Icc-cluster and the different combinations of some commonly used features, MG-algorithm and Icc-cluster are two different algorithms to search the nearest siRNA neighbors. For the ineffective siRNAs in test data, they are removed from test data by I-iteration, where I-iteration continually updates training data by adding these successively removed siRNAs. Furthermore, the efficacy of siRNAs of test data is predicted by their nearest neighbors of training data. CONCLUSIONS By siRNAs of Hencken dataset, results show that our algorithm removes almost ineffective siRNAs from test data, gives the clear boundary between potent and ineffective siRNAs, and accurately predicts the efficacy of siRNAs also. We suggest that our algorithm can provide new insights for selecting the potent siRNAs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xingang Jia
- School of Mathematics, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, People's Republic of China.
| | - Qiuhong Han
- Department of Mathematics, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, 210037, People's Republic of China
| | - Zuhong Lu
- State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, People's Republic of China
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2
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Hussein M, Andrade dos Ramos Z, Berkhout B, Herrera-Carrillo E. In Silico Prediction and Selection of Target Sequences in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA Genome for an Antiviral Attack. Viruses 2022; 14:v14020385. [PMID: 35215977 PMCID: PMC8880226 DOI: 10.3390/v14020385] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2022] [Revised: 02/07/2022] [Accepted: 02/08/2022] [Indexed: 12/10/2022] Open
Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has urged the development of protective vaccines and the search for specific antiviral drugs. The modern molecular biology tools provides alternative methods, such as CRISPR-Cas and RNA interference, that can be adapted as antiviral approaches, and contribute to this search. The unique CRISPR-Cas13d system, with the small crRNA guide molecule, mediates a sequence-specific attack on RNA, and can be developed as an anti-coronavirus strategy. We analyzed the SARS-CoV-2 genome to localize the hypothetically best crRNA-annealing sites of 23 nucleotides based on our extensive expertise with sequence-specific antiviral strategies. We considered target sites of which the sequence is well-conserved among SARS-CoV-2 isolates. As we should prepare for a potential future outbreak of related viruses, we screened for targets that are conserved between SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. To further broaden the search, we screened for targets that are conserved between SARS-CoV-2 and the more distantly related MERS-CoV, as well as the four other human coronaviruses (OC43, 229E, NL63, HKU1). Finally, we performed a search for pan-corona target sequences that are conserved among all these coronaviruses, including the new Omicron variant, that are able to replicate in humans. This survey may contribute to the design of effective, safe, and escape-proof antiviral strategies to prepare for future pandemics.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Ben Berkhout
- Correspondence: (B.B.); (E.H.-C.); Tel.: +31-20-566-4822 (B.B.); +31-20-566-4865 (E.H.-C.)
| | - Elena Herrera-Carrillo
- Correspondence: (B.B.); (E.H.-C.); Tel.: +31-20-566-4822 (B.B.); +31-20-566-4865 (E.H.-C.)
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3
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Herrera-Carrillo E, Gao Z, Berkhout B. CRISPR therapy towards an HIV cure. Brief Funct Genomics 2021; 19:201-208. [PMID: 31711197 DOI: 10.1093/bfgp/elz021] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/19/2019] [Revised: 08/19/2019] [Accepted: 08/21/2019] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
Tools based on RNA interference (RNAi) and the recently developed clustered regularly short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system enable the selective modification of gene expression, which also makes them attractive therapeutic reagents for combating HIV infection and other infectious diseases. Several parallels can be drawn between the RNAi and CRISPR-Cas9 platforms. An ideal RNAi or CRISPR-Cas9 therapeutic strategy for treating infectious or genetic diseases should exhibit potency, high specificity and safety. However, therapeutic applications of RNAi and CRISPR-Cas9 have been challenged by several major limitations, some of which can be overcome by optimal design of the therapy or the design of improved reagents. In this review, we will discuss some advantages and limitations of anti-HIV strategies based on RNAi and CRISPR-Cas9 with a focus on the efficiency, specificity, off-target effects and delivery methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Elena Herrera-Carrillo
- Department of Medical Microbiology Laboratory of Experimental Virology Amsterdam UMC, AMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Zongliang Gao
- Department of Medical Microbiology Laboratory of Experimental Virology Amsterdam UMC, AMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Ben Berkhout
- Department of Medical Microbiology Laboratory of Experimental Virology Amsterdam UMC, AMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.,Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
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4
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He F, Han Y, Gong J, Song J, Wang H, Li Y. Predicting siRNA efficacy based on multiple selective siRNA representations and their combination at score level. Sci Rep 2017; 7:44836. [PMID: 28317874 PMCID: PMC5357899 DOI: 10.1038/srep44836] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2017] [Accepted: 02/13/2017] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) may induce to targeted gene knockdown, and the gene silencing effectiveness relies on the efficacy of the siRNA. Therefore, the task of this paper is to construct an effective siRNA prediction method. In our work, we try to describe siRNA from both quantitative and qualitative aspects. For quantitative analyses, we form four groups of effective features, including nucleotide frequencies, thermodynamic stability profile, thermodynamic of siRNA-mRNA interaction, and mRNA related features, as a new mixed representation, in which thermodynamic of siRNA-mRNA interaction is introduced to siRNA efficacy prediction for the first time to our best knowledge. And then an F-score based feature selection is employed to investigate the contribution of each feature and remove the weak relevant features. Meanwhile, we encode the siRNA sequence and existed empirical design rules as a qualitative siRNA representation. These two kinds of siRNA representations are combined to predict siRNA efficacy by supported Vector Regression (SVR) at score level. The experimental results indicate that our method may select the features with powerful discriminative ability and make the two kinds of siRNA representations work at full capacity. The prediction results also demonstrate that our method can outperform other popular siRNA efficacy prediction algorithms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fei He
- Northeast Normal University, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, School of Environment, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, Institute of Computational Biology, Changchun, 130117, China
| | - Ye Han
- Jilin University, College of Computer Science and Technology, Changchun, 130012, China
- Jilin University, Key Laboratory of Symbolic Computation and Knowledge Engineering of Ministry of Education, Changchun, 130012, China
| | - Jianting Gong
- Northeast Normal University, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, Institute of Computational Biology, Changchun, 130117, China
| | - Jiazhi Song
- Northeast Normal University, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, Institute of Computational Biology, Changchun, 130117, China
| | - Han Wang
- Northeast Normal University, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, Institute of Computational Biology, Changchun, 130117, China
| | - Yanwen Li
- Northeast Normal University, School of Computer Science and Information Technology, Changchun, 130117, China
- Northeast Normal University, Institute of Computational Biology, Changchun, 130117, China
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5
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Ui-Tei K, Naito Y, Saigo K. Essential notes regarding the design of functional siRNAs for efficient mammalian RNAi. J Biomed Biotechnol 2010; 2006:65052. [PMID: 17057367 PMCID: PMC1559925 DOI: 10.1155/jbb/2006/65052] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2023] Open
Abstract
Short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are widely used to bring about RNA
interference (RNAi) in mammalian cells. Numerous siRNAs may be
designed for any target gene though most of which would be
incapable of efficiently inducing mammalian RNAi. Certain highly
functional siRNAs designed for knockout of a particular gene may
render unrelated endogenous genes nonfunctional. These major
bottlenecks should be properly eliminated when RNAi technologies
are employed for any experiment in mammalian functional genomics.
This paper thus presents essential notes and findings regarding
the proper choice of siRNA-sequence selection algorithms and
web-based online software systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kumiko Ui-Tei
- Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate
School of Science and Undergraduate Program for
Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, School of
Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo,
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
| | - Yuki Naito
- Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate
School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
| | - Kaoru Saigo
- Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate
School of Science, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
- *Kaoru Saigo:
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Zhang Z, Han L, Liang X, Cao L, Sun W. A PCR based method to construct small interference RNA expression vectors. Mol Biol Rep 2008; 36:801-5. [PMID: 18409017 DOI: 10.1007/s11033-008-9248-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2008] [Accepted: 03/31/2008] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Small interference RNAs (siRNA) have been shown to be useful in the field of gene therapy and gene function studies. As a siRNA expression vector, pSilencer employ RNA polymerase III promoters and could stably produce siRNA for weeks. But once one siRNA sequence was inserted into the pSilencer vector, the other siRNA sequence will hardly be reconstructed, because the site of siRNA production has been occupied and difficult to be changed, so it is not suitable for screen of effective siRNA sequence. To solve this problem, we constructed the subclone pSilcencer329, which generated from pSilencer3.1, then developed a PCR based method of constructing siRNA expression vectors, and generated pSilencerBCL2L2 recombinants efficiently. This method was proven to be effective, reliable, and less expensive, and thus will be of great help in regular gene silencing studies, and will be especially suitable for large scale gene function analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zhiyong Zhang
- Department of Immunology, Medical School, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, China
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Endothelin-1 regulates astrocyte proliferation and reactive gliosis via a JNK/c-Jun signaling pathway. J Neurosci 2008; 28:2394-408. [PMID: 18322086 DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.5652-07.2008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 190] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Reactive gliosis is characterized by enhanced glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) expression, cellular hypertrophy, and astrocyte proliferation. The cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying this process are still largely undefined. We investigated the role of endothelin-1 (ET-1) in reactive gliosis in corpus callosum after lysolecithin (LPC)-induced focal demyelination and in cultured astrocytes. We show that ET-1 levels are upregulated in demyelinated lesions within 5 d after LPC injection, together with enhanced astrocyte proliferation, GFAP expression, and JNK phosphorylation. Infusion of the pan-ET-receptor (ET-R) antagonist Bosentan or the selective ET(B)-R antagonist BQ788 into the corpus callosum prevented postlesion astrocyte proliferation and JNK phosphorylation. In cultured astrocytes, ET-1-induced activation of ET(B)-Rs promotes a reactive phenotype by enhancing both GFAP expression and astrocyte proliferation. In the same cells, ET-1 activates both JNK and p38MAPK pathways, and induces c-Jun expression at the mRNA and protein levels. By using selective pharmacological inhibitors, we also provide evidence that ET-1 induces astrocyte proliferation and GFAP expression through activation of ERK- and JNK-dependent pathways, consistent with the previous observation of ET-1-induced activation of ERK (Schinelli et al., 2001). Finally, we show by gain and loss of function that increased c-Jun expression enhances the proliferative response of astrocytes to ET-1, whereas c-jun siRNA prevents ET-1-induced cell proliferation. Our results indicate that the effects of ET-1 on astrocyte proliferation depend on c-Jun induction and activation through ERK- and JNK-dependent pathways, and suggest that ET-R-associated pathways might represent important targets to control reactive gliosis.
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Ui-Tei K, Naito Y, Zenno S, Nishi K, Yamato K, Takahashi F, Juni A, Saigo K. Functional dissection of siRNA sequence by systematic DNA substitution: modified siRNA with a DNA seed arm is a powerful tool for mammalian gene silencing with significantly reduced off-target effect. Nucleic Acids Res 2008; 36:2136-51. [PMID: 18267968 PMCID: PMC2367719 DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkn042] [Citation(s) in RCA: 143] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Short interfering RNA (siRNA)-based RNA interference (RNAi) is widely used for target gene knockdown in mammalian cells. To clarify the position-dependent functions of ribonucleotides in siRNA, siRNAs with various DNA substitutions were constructed. The following could be simultaneously replaced with DNA without substantial loss of gene-silencing activity: the seed arm, which occupies positions 2–8 from the 5′end of the guide strand; its complementary sequence; the 5′end of the guide strand and the 3′overhang of the passenger strand. However, most part of the 3′ two-thirds of the guide strand could not be replaced with DNA, possibly due to binding of RNA-recognition proteins such as TRBP2 and Ago2. The passenger strand with DNA in the 3′end proximal region was incapable of inducing off-target effect. Owing to lesser stability of DNA–RNA hybrid than RNA duplex, modified siRNAs with DNA substitution in the seed region were, in most cases, incapable to exert unintended gene silencing due to seed sequence homology. Thus, it may be possible to design DNA–RNA chimeras which effectively silence mammalian target genes without silencing unintended genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kumiko Ui-Tei
- Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
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9
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Naito Y, Nohtomi K, Onogi T, Uenishi R, Ui-Tei K, Saigo K, Takebe Y. Optimal design and validation of antiviral siRNA for targeting HIV-1. Retrovirology 2007; 4:80. [PMID: 17996047 PMCID: PMC2204037 DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-4-80] [Citation(s) in RCA: 45] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2007] [Accepted: 11/08/2007] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
We propose rational designing of antiviral short-interfering RNA (siRNA) targeting highly divergent HIV-1. In this study, conserved regions within HIV-1 genomes were identified through an exhaustive computational analysis, and the functionality of siRNAs targeting the highest possible conserved regions was validated. We present several promising antiviral siRNA candidates that effectively inhibited multiple subtypes of HIV-1 by targeting the best conserved regions in pandemic HIV-1 group M strains.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuki Naito
- Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan.
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