RNA interference (RNAi) is a powerful research tool that can be used to silence the expression of a specific gene. In the past several years, RNAi has provided the opportunity to identify factors and pathways involved in complex biological processes by performing unbiased loss-of-function screens on a genome-wide scale. Here we describe a genome-wide RNAi screening strategy to identify factors that regulates epigenetic silencing of a specific tumor suppressor gene, using RASSF1A as an example. The approach we describe is a general RNAi screening strategy that can be applied to identify other factors that drive and/or maintain epigenetic modifications on specific genes, including cancer-related genes.
Keywords: Epigenetic silencing; Positive-selection screen; RNA interference; shRNA; siRNA.