What are the most important controls for my siRNA experiment?

The most important controls are a non-targeting (negative) control, and a positive control.

A non-targeting siRNA control is designed to have no known target in the cells. This negative control is important for distinguishing sequence-specific silencing from non-specific effects in the RNAi experiment. Non-specific effects can be siRNA concentration dependent, so it is important to use negative control siRNA at the same concentration as your gene-specific siRNA.

Efficient delivery of siRNA is critical for achieving significant gene silencing. A positive control siRNA can be used to optimize delivery conditions and to monitor transfection efficiency throughout your experiments. An extensively validated siRNA that targets a housekeeping gene is ideal as a positive control.

We offer several positive and negative controls in our Accell, ON-TARGETplus, and siGENOME product lines, as well as fluorescent controls for your siRNA experiments. Please refer to our Technical Note: Effective Controls for RNAi Experiments to learn more: https://horizondiscovery.com/-/media/Files/Horizon/resources/Application-notes/effective-sirna-controls-technote.pdf
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