Knockdown induce apoptosis - (Jul/09/2012 )

I'm trying to find a gene which, when knocked down, should cause apoptosis. This is supposed to happen in all human cell types. My thoughts are to target genes for proteins of the electron transport chain. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13678425

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/19930842

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/22771706

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/22718913


the question is why you want to do that? if you elaborate I will help you more.

I can get the knockdown agent specifically into virus-infected cells. These cells can be very different, thus I need a target which is ubiquitous for "all" cell types. Usually what you find when searching for this is targets for different cancer cell lines where the idea is to deliver siRNA systemically to all cells where the siRNA will only kill the cancer cells.
Does that make things more clear?

does your virus inhibit apoptosis or induce apoptosis?

There are various proteins within the intrinsic and extrinsic pathways, and when you block one of them, other ones come in play. For example, I used to try kcocking down Bax, but still my cells died after infection (my virus induces apoptosis). Although the rate of death was slower compared to original cells, I could not reach a full stop. It was like other Bcl-2 proteins took part in absence of Bax. So I suggest to not play with those. Do not play with any Bcl-2 family of proteins. Even Bcl-2 itself, because Bcl-XL can almost do the same job, etc. the proteins of the extrinsic pathway are also the same.

So I agree with you to target proteins of the electron transport chain. But why not try structral proteins?

Thanks for the tip on Bcl.
Structural proteins can of course be tried, do you have a suggestion on which one?

hm...there are quite a number of them. I have not studied actin very well, maybe you can have a look on that at PubMed. see if anybody has managed to knock it down.