Principles of Dicer Substrate (D-siRNA) Design and Function

An efficient RNAi largely depends on optimal design of the siRNA. In recent studies, Dicer substrates were found to be more potent than classical synthetic 21-mer siRNAs, suggesting a coupling of the Dicer-mediated processing step to the efficient assembly of the silencing complex, RISC. We describe the fundamental principles and experimental results leading to optimal Dicer substrates.