AUTHOR=Lück Stefanie , Kreszies Tino , Strickert Marc , Schweizer Patrick , Kuhlmann Markus , Douchkov Dimitar 

TITLE=siRNA-Finder (si-Fi) Software for RNAi-Target Design and Off-Target Prediction

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2019.01023

DOI=10.3389/fpls.2019.01023

ISSN=1664-462X

ABSTRACT=<p>RNA interference (RNAi) is a technique used for transgene-mediated gene silencing based on the mechanism of posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS). PTGS is an ubiquitous basic biological phenomenon involved in the regulation of transcript abundance and plants’ immune response to viruses. PTGS also mediates genomic stability by silencing of retroelements. RNAi has become an important research tool for studying gene function by strong and selective suppression of target genes. Here, we present <bold>si-Fi</bold>, a software tool for design optimization of RNAi constructs necessary for specific target gene knock-down. It offers efficiency prediction of RNAi sequences and off-target search, required for the practical application of RNAi. <bold>si-Fi</bold> is an open-source (CC BY-SA license) desktop software that works in Microsoft Windows environment and can use custom sequence databases in standard FASTA format.</p>