Effective Delivery of Functional siRNAs into Cells - siRNA

Unlike other electroporators, which often require a minimum of 100,000 cells to achieve acceptable delivery and enough viable cells for analysis, we have found that the combination of our 96-well electroporator and accompanying electroporation buffer facilitates experiments with as few as 25,000 cells.

Table I. Electroporation parameters applied to different cell types

Summary Delivery of siRNA to primary cell types, a setting where genetic manipulations traditionally have proved difficult, will be a valuable research tool in various applications, including gene function analysis, target validation, gene discovery and even development of gene-specific siRNA-based therapeutics. Electroporation with siPORT siRNA Electroporation Buffer and optimized experimental conditions is an effective combination for successfully transfecting primary and hard-to-transfect cells with siRNAs. Our results demonstrate that electroporation provides an efficient nonviral method to induce RNAi in cells that are resistant to siRNA delivery using traditional chemical transfection agents. However, conditions vary with cell type, and it is important to optimize siRNA concentration and pulse number to achieve maximal gene silencing.
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