RNA Interference-Mediated Gene Silencing by Branched Tripodal RNAs Does Not Require Dicer Processing.

Specific gene silencing through RNA interference (RNAi) holds great promise as the next-generation therapeutic development platform. Previously, we have shown that branched, tripodal interfering RNA (tiRNA) structures could simultaneously trigger RNAi-mediated gene silencing of three target genes with 38 nt-long guide strands associated with Argonaute 2. Herein, we show that the branched RNA structure can trigger effective gene silencing in Dicer knockout cell line, demonstrating that the Dicer-mediated processing is not required for tiRNA activity. The finding of this study confirms the flexibility of the structure of RNAi triggers as well as the length of the guide strand in RNAi-mediated gene silencing.