An insight into siRNA screening from the Sheffield RNAi Screening Facility
siRNA screens have been used for gene discovery in a wide range of cellular and organism contexts. Many of the lessons learnt from some of the initial problems have been used to develop further practices and validation methods. RNAi screens have not only determined potential genes involved in basic biological processes, but they have become a tool used to dissect out key elements of disease or avenues of novelty in treatments. Dr. Brown presents different assays his team has used, to showcase the potential use of siRNA as part of the gene discovery process, and highlights the precautions they have taken to maintain reliability.
Presenter
Stephen Brown, PhD has managed the Sheffield RNAi Screening Facility (SRSF) for over 12 years, and leads their master course in Genomic Approaches in Drug Discovery course at Sheffield. The RNAi screening facility in Sheffield provides its customers with resources to perform both RNAi and small molecule screens in Human and Drosophila cell lines. He has a PhD on co-suppression (RNAi in plants) from the University of Nottingham and then changed model organisms to work on developmental genetics in Drosophila.