GenScript siRNA Controls

To ensure that the conclusions drawn from siRNA experiments are as accurate as possible, good procedure and good sense demand appropriate experimental controls. We recommend including at least two types of experimental controls, positive and negative, in every RNAi experiment.

Positive Controls:

siRNA positive controls are useful as a means of checking experimental systems. That is, when the expected results appear with a positive control siRNA, one may be reasonably sure that the transfections, the RNA extraction, and the assay, are reliable and robust. A good positive control reagent targets a well-expressed but non-essential gene. Such controls are useful for establishing experimental parameters without affecting cellular viability. Some positive controls can also be used as negative controls.

GenScript provides the following positive controls:

Please follow this link to order GenScript siRNA Positive Controls.

Negative Controls:

A non-targeting siRNA control helps establish whether or not any decrease in gene expression levels observed with a gene-specific siRNA is related to a sequence-specific RNAi event. Global down-regulation may be due to cellular stress responses to a certain transfection reagent or technique. Without negative controls, a researcher might mistakenly interpret this broad, non-specific silencing as true gene-specific silencing. Negative siRNA control reagents are designed to have no known target in the cell line of choice. These reagents allow researchers to distinguish sequence-specific silencing from sequence-independent effects. Such sequence-independent effects can include toxicity resulting from the process of transfection in conjunction with nucleic acid delivery or hypersensitivity to the introduction of double-stranded RNA. Investigators are encouraged to test multiple candidates in their own experimental systems to empirically confirm that the negative controls do not result in any observable and unintended off-target effects.

GenScript customers are welcome to use our online siRNA Sequence Scrambler to develop negative control constructs. The ideal construct has the same nucleotide composition as the target sequence but no homology to any mRNA sequence collected in the NCBI RefSeq database.

Please follow this link to order GenScript siRNA Negative Controls.