Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) of 19-25 bp mediate the cleavage of complementary mRNA, leading to post-transcriptional gene silencing. We examined cationic lipid (CL)-mediated delivery of siRNA into mammalian cells and made comparisons to CL-based DNA delivery. The effect of lipid composition and headgroup charge on the biophysical and biological properties of CL-siRNA vectors was determined. X-ray diffraction revealed that CL-siRNA complexes exhibited lamellar and inverted hexagonal phases, qualitatively similar to CL-DNA complexes, but also formed other nonlamellar structures. Surprisingly, optimally formulated inverted hexagonal 1,2-dioleoyl-3-trimethylammonium-propane (DOTAP)/1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) CL-siRNA complexes exhibited high toxicity and much lower target-specific gene silencing than lamellar CL-siRNA complexes even though optimally formulated, inverted hexagonal CL-DNA complexes show high transfection efficiency in cell culture. We further found that efficient silencing required cationic lipid/nucleic acid molar charge ratios (F chg ) nearly an order of magnitude larger than those yielding efficiently transfecting CL-DNA complexes. This second unexpected finding has implications for cell toxicity. Multivalent lipids (MVLs) require a smaller number of cationic lipids at a given F chg of the complex. Consistent with this observation, the pentavalent lipid MVL5 exhibited lower toxicity and superior silencing efficiency over a large range in both the lipid composition and F chg when compared to monovalent DOTAP. Most importantly, MVL5 achieved much higher total knockdown of the target gene in CL-siRNA complex regimes where toxicity was low. This property of CL-siRNA complexes contrasts to CL-DNA complexes, where the optimized transfection efficiencies of multivalent and monovalent lipids are comparable.RNA interference (RNAi) 1 is an evolutionarily conserved post-transcriptional gene-silencing pathway, initially elucidated in Caenorhabditis elegans (1) and in plants (2, 3) where long double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) mediate sequence specific silencing of gene expression. In mammalian cells, it was discovered that short dsRNAs (19-25 bp, with two 3′-nucleotide overhangs) (4-8) termed small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), mediate silencing in a sequence-dependent manner. RNAi has led to a surge in research activity aimed at broadly utilizing the technology in functional genomics studies (4) and potentially in therapeutic applications (9).The specificity of the RNAi machinery has been demonstrated by its ability to discriminate between targets with only one base pair difference (5). Thus, it is conceivable that siRNAs can be designed that selectively knock down the expression of any given gene product when the sequence of the gene is known (10). Such a strategy, for example, provides an alternative to genetic disruptions in model organisms to study loss-of-function phenotypes (10). In addition, therapeutic applications of RNAi are currently being explored in which the t...

Rotavirus is a dsRNA virus that infects epithelial cells that line the surface of the small intestine. It causes severe diarrheal illness in children and ∼500,000 deaths per year worldwide. We studied the mechanisms by which intestinal epithelial cells (IECs) sense rotavirus infection and signal IFN-β production, and investigated the importance of IFN-β production by IECs for controlling rotavirus production by intestinal epithelium and virus excretion in the feces. In contrast with most RNA viruses, which interact with either retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) or melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA5) inside cells, rotavirus was sensed by both RIG-I and MDA5, alone and in combination. Rotavirus did not signal IFN-β through either of the dsRNA sensors TLR3 or dsRNA-activated protein kinase (PKR). Silencing RIG-I or MDA5, or their common adaptor protein mitochondrial antiviral signaling protein (MAVS), significantly decreased IFN-β production and increased rotavirus titers in infected IECs. Overexpression of laboratory of genetics and physiology 2, a RIG-I–like receptor that interacts with viral RNA but lacks the caspase activation and recruitment domains required for signaling through MAVS, significantly decreased IFN-β production and increased rotavirus titers in infected IECs. Rotavirus-infected mice lacking MAVS, but not those lacking TLR3, TRIF, or PKR, produced significantly less IFN-β and increased amounts of virus in the intestinal epithelium, and shed increased quantities of virus in the feces. We conclude that RIG-I or MDA5 signaling through MAVS is required for the activation of IFN-β production by rotavirus-infected IECs and has a functionally important role in determining the magnitude of rotavirus replication in the intestinal epithelium.

Motivated by the promises of gene therapy, there is a large interest in developing non-viral lipid-based vectors for therapeutic applications due to their nonimmunogenicity, low toxicity, ease of production, and the potential of transferring large pieces of DNA into cells. In fact, cationic lipid (CL) based vectors are among the prevalent synthetic carriers of nucleic acids (NAs) currently used in human clinical gene therapy trials worldwide. These vectors are studied both for gene delivery with CL–DNA complexes and gene silencing with CL–siRNA (short-interfering RNA) complexes. However, their transfection efficiencies and silencing efficiencies remain low compared to those of engineered viral vectors. This reflects the currently poor understanding of transfection-related mechanisms at the molecular and self-assembled levels, including a lack of knowledge about interactions between membranes and double stranded NAs and between CL–NA complexes and cellular components. In this review, we describe our recent efforts to improve the mechanistic understanding of transfection by CL–NA complexes, which will help to design optimal lipid-based carriers of DNA and siRNA for therapeutic gene delivery and gene silencing.

The measles virus P gene products V and C antagonize the host interferon (IFN) response, blocking both IFN signaling and production. Using Moraten vaccine strain-derived measles virus and isogenic mutants deficient for either V or C protein production (V ko and C ko , respectively), we observed that the C Measles virus (MV), a member of the genus Morbillivirus of the Paramyxoviridae, causes an acute febrile illness. Despite an effective vaccine, measles continues to cause extreme morbidity and mortality worldwide (10), and recently, there has been a resurgence of measles in industrialized countries, where a lack of adherence to vaccine recommendations is an increasing problem (5, 12). The need for improved MV vaccines (11), together with the potential for use of engineered MV vaccine strains with defined mechanisms of attenuation as oncolytic viruses for cancer therapy (4), further justify ongoing efforts to gain an enhanced understanding of the host response to MV infection at the molecular level.The 15.9-kb negative-stranded RNA genome of MV consists of six genes (N, P/V/C, M, F, H, and L). The P gene is polycistronic, encoding the V and C nonstructural proteins in addition to P, a structural phosphoprotein and essential cofactor for the viral polymerase (2, 3, 10). The V protein shares its N-terminal 231 amino acids with P, but the C-terminal 68 amino acids are unique because of the pseudotemplated G insertion that causes a frameshift in V mRNA, whereas the C protein is synthesized by an alternative translation initiation AUG codon positioned 22 nucleotides downstream of the P/V translation start codon (3, 11). V and C are accessory proteins that serve a variety of functions including the modulation of the host innate immune response to MV infection (8, 9, 27). Isogenic MV mutants that are defective for the expression of either V or C have been generated. Strong adaptive immune responses, but dysregulated innate responses, are seen with these mutants (4,8,35).An important component of the host innate antiviral response is the interferon (IFN) response. IFNs are proinflammatory cytokines that possess antiviral activity (27,31). IFN action involves IFN binding to cognate receptors and subsequent prototypical JAK-STAT signal transduction that leads to the expression of IFN-stimulated genes, whose products inhibit virus growth. IFN production involves the recognition of pathogen-associated molecular patterns including viral RNAs by retinoic acid-inducible protein (RIG-I)-like cytosolic receptors (RLRs) and membrane-associated Toll-like receptors (TLRs). The RLR and TLR3 sensors signal through cognate adapter proteins, including IPS-1 and TRIF, respectively, to transcriptionally activate IFN expression (36,40). In the case of the IFN-␤ gene, IFN regulatory factor 3 (IRF-3) and nuclear factor B (NF-B) are activated by RLR or TLR signaling, enter the nucleus, and function together with activating transcription factor 2 (ATF-2)/c-jun to constitute the IFN-␤ enhanceosome that drives IFN-␤ transcription (22).The antago...