Abstract
It has recently been reported that a common side effect of translation-blocking morpholino antisense oligonucleotides is the induction of a set of innate immune response genes in Xenopus embryos and that splicing-blocking morpholinos lead to unexpected off-target mis-splicing events. Here, we present ananalysis of all publicly available Xenopus RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data in a reexamination of the effects of translation-blocking morpholinos on the innate immune response. Our analysis does notsupport the authors' general conclusion, which wasbased on a limited number of RNA-seq datasets. Moreover, the strong induction of an immune response appears to be specific to the tbxt/tbxt2 morpholinos. The more comprehensive study presented here indicates that using morpholinos for targeted gene knockdowns remains of considerable value for the rapid identification of gene function.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have