Screening for Host Proteins with Pro- and Antiviral Activity Using High-Throughput RNAi

RNA interference (RNAi) describes the mechanism of posttranscriptional gene silencing by small (typically 18–24 nucleotides) RNA molecules and includes small-interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and microRNAs (miRNAs). As siRNAs and miRNAs are simple to use experimentally, they are easily adaptable to high-throughput methodologies and provide an ideal tool for genome-wide gene depletion studies. Over recent years RNAi has been used extensively to investigate the complex interactions between pathogen and host, and the identification of novel cellular factors and pathways influencing viral disease pathogenesis exemplifies the power of this technique. Here, the use of RNAi to investigate the functional role of cellular proteins in herpesvirus (Herpes Simplex Virus Type I; HSV-1) replication and how to identify novel antiviral and proviral host proteins is described.