Functional Analysis by Inducible RNA Interference in Drosophila melanogaster

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) interference triggered by double-stranded RNA has become a powerful tool for generating loss-of-function phenotypes. It is used to inactivate genes of interest and represents an elegant approach to genome functional analysis by reverse genetics. In Drosophila , RNA interference has been used in both cell culture and animals. We have adopted this approach to reveal the physiological roles of a number of proteins involved in mitochondrial deoxyribonucleic acid metabolism, and present here experimental schemes to induce the stable expression of double-stranded RNA in Schneider cells and in transgenic Drosophila.