amiRNA technology has many advantages over more traditional antisense or hairpin methods of gene silencing.
First, the region used for silencing is only 21 nucleotides long, thereby increasing specificity for the gene of interest and reducing the likelihood of inadvertently silencing nontarget genes (e.g., those that share stretches of sequence similarity with the target gene). Silencing of nontarget genes can be problematic when large stretches of sequence are used for hairpin-based silencing approaches.
Second, the cloning to make the amiRNA cassette is done by a series of straightforward site-directed mutagenesis PCRs on an existing template plasmid. Inserts from the resulting plasmid can then be transferred to a binary plant transformation vector either using Gateway technology or traditional cloning approaches.
Finally, there is an easy to use web-based tool to select optimal 21 nucleotide regions and to design the primers to be used for the cloning
Artificial microRNAs (amiRNA) can be used to very specifically target genes