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From 2014.igem.org

Welcome to the official Wiki of the first University of Warwick 2014 iGEM team. Our team consists of members from different disciplines all having a common interest in the area of Synthetic biology coming together to compete, collaborate and contribute! Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) represent a diverse family of biological regulators that are able to bind specifically to mRNA and prevent translation. siRNAs have been used in reverse genetics to understand the function of genes in gene knock-out studies. It has become apparent from a clinical viewpoint that siRNAs represent one type of therapeutic against diseases which have abberant gene expression profilessuch as alzheimers and cancer. siRNAs work through a conserved evolutionariy mechanism, specific to eukaryotes that utilizes the enzyme RNAse type 3 enzyme Dicer, that is able to dice a siRNA Our project involves the production of a self-replicating RNA system, utilizing the well characterized Hepatitis C virus subtype 1b RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). By using a number of different biological components, We wish to develop a system whereby small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) are produced intermittently; without having the need to systematically introduce siRNAs through injectable delievery into patients. As we circumvent the biological flow of information at the level of mRNA, our system overcomes the limitation of gene therapeutic methods which utilize vectors that routinely integrate into the host genome and can downregulate, or activate genes