Ribozymes: Applications in Cancer Metastasis Research

This chapter addresses the application of ribozymes in studying an important area of cancer biology, the process of metastasis. An example is given on how ribozymes can be used to study the role in this process of one particular gene. Initially, a brief introduction to the biology of cancer metastasis is given. The procedure of selecting ribozyme target sites and constructing a ribozyme is presumed to be known by the reader. The nucleic acid sequence of the actual ribozyme is described in Subheading 2. , whereas Subheading 3. focuses mainly on methods that may be original for this particular study, including assays dealing with the crucial question of whether observed phenotypic effects of introducing a ribozyme into target cells is a consequence of ribozyme activity, or merely reflects random differences in phenotypes between different cell clones. In Subheading 4. some of the difficulties and hallmarks of the above mentioned procedures are discussed, and the chapter concludes with an evaluation of the biological system used for examining putatively metastasis-associated genes.