Is there any disadvantage of using siRNA transfection for some functional assay, such as cell viability or cell death? Can anyone recommend a vendor for synthesize dsRNA (if the target sequence is already known for efficient knockdown, based on the use of shRNA)? Many thanks,
siRNA transfection only gives transient knockdown (3-7 days). If the phenotype takes longer than 3-7 days to show, then siRNA hardly works. Also some cell types are not easy to transfect. Dharmacon and Ambion are good companies for siRNAs.
Thanks. So if I get very quick phenotypes in cultured cells using siRNA transfection, will the data be convincing? Do I still need stable shRNA ( regular of conditionally if it is lethal) to confirm the results? It seems there are also disadvantages of shRNA, such as in some cases sequence-specific toxicity (probably due to overloading the RNAi machineary) . But I am not sure about the down side of using siRNA.