The Chapter of Biotechnology – Antisense Technology

With the development of molecular biology and genetic engineering, gene therapy has developed rapidly. Antisense technology is one of the kind. The technology, with the principle of nucleic acid hybridization, can design antisense nucleic acid that aims at a certain target sequence to restrain the expression of specific genes, including antisense RNA, antisense DNA and ribozymes. Moreover, all of these are obtained through synthesis.

Then, as for antisense RNA, it refers to RNA molecules that have complementary sequence with target RNA such as mRNA, and it can participate in the regulation of gene expression by conducting base pairing with target RNA. When it comes to antisense nucleic acid, it refers to those RNA or DNA molecules that have precisely complementary functions with specific mRNA, which can also block the translating process to a certain degree. The technology that can specifically block some gene expressions to make low or no expression is generally called antisense nucleic acid technology. Based on such technology, antisense ribozyme can play an important role in restraining the over-expression of some harmful genes and uncontrolled genes. As antisense ribozyme technology has developed in a mature status, it has been gradually applied to the research of some parasitic diseases. On one hand, this technology prevents the combination between ribosome and mRNA through binding with target mRNA to form the steric hindrance effect. On the other hand, after the combination, the reaction can activate the endogenous RNase or ribozyme and then degrade mRNA.

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Generally speaking, compared with other conventional medicines, antisense nucleic acid, as one of the gene therapy drugs, has many advantages, such as high specificity, high biological activity, high efficiency, optimal drug design, low toxicity, safety, and so on. For example, antisense oligonucleotides can carry specific genetic information that is complementary to the changing order of base pairing. Furthermore, in a fundamental aspect, such technology contains available natural sequence information so that it can be regarded as the most reasonable drug design. In addition, there isn’t obvious toxicity in antisense nucleic acid, so it will be degraded eventually, which avoids some certain dangers.

In brief, the rapid development of antisense technology has provided a larger stage for the research of parasitology, which enriches the strategy for gene therapy in parasitic diseases. However, to be honest, current antisense nucleic acid technology still has some problems. For instance, some antisense nucleic acid molecules that exist naturally are difficult to be separated and purified. Therefore, more efforts should be done to promote the rapid advance of such technology.

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