Post

Simon Fisher
@profsimonfisher.bsky.social
Simon Fisher@profsimonfisher.bsky.social

Molecular biologists planning to see “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” will be delighted to know that target-specific siRNA plays a key role in this movie. The film does also include a spurious claim that the inhibitory mechanism occurs prior to transcription, so some suspension of disbelief is required.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

Much drug development today involves developing chemicals to fit into proteins and block them. But this almost never turns out as planned: many drug candidates get broken down in the body, interfere with other proteins and cause toxic side effects, or fail to be absorbed at all.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

The majority of proteins are considered undruggable, because they lack a pocket for drugs to bind, or they are ‘intrinsically disordered’, without coherent structure.

Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev

siRNA, or ‘small interfering RNA’, is a short strand of RNA that blocks the production of proteins. As a brief refresher, proteins in the body are produced by DNA --> mRNA --> protein. siRNA molecules bind to the intermediate mRNA and target it for destruction, meaning the protein isn’t produced.