Designing Effective small interfering RNA for Post-Transcriptional Silencing of Human GREM1: A Comprehensive Bioinformatics Approach

Asiedu Ebenezer

Several guidelines for designing effective siRNA to target mammalian genes have been reported [16, 21] . Online software tools available for siRNA design integrate some of the proposed guidelines in their algorithms to ensure reliable predictions. In this study, the guidelines proposed by Ui-Tei [22] , Reynolds [23] and Amarzguioui [24] are used to select effective siRNAs from a number of potential candidates designed by multiple computational algorithms. A comprehensive analysis of target site availabilities for the selected candidates are performed. The siRNA designed here are meant to target human gremlin-1 mRNA, hence, efforts are made to ensure reduced off-target effects. The best candidates selected in this study are compared with experimentally successful siRNAs to determine the gene silencing potency of the selected siRNAs.