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BMC Cell Biology BioMed Central Methodology article Open Access A plasmid-based system for expressing small interfering RNA libraries in mammalian cells Ajamete Kaykas and Randall T Moon* Address: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Pharmacology, and Center for Developmental Biology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 98195, USA Email: Ajamete Kaykas - akaykas@; Randall T Moon* - rtmoon@ * Corresponding author Published: 30 April 2004 Received: 04 February 2004 Accepted: 30 April 2004 BMC Cell Biology 2004, 5:16 This article is available from: /1471-2121/5/16 © 2004 Kaykas and Moon; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the articles original URL. Abstract Background: RNA interference (RNAi) is an evolutionarily conserved process that functions to inhibit gene expression. The use of RNAi in mammals as a tool to study gene function has rapidly developed in the last couple of years since the discovery that the function-inhibiting units of RNAi are short 21–25 nt double-stranded RNAs (siRNAs) derived from their longer template. The use of siRNAs allows for gene-specific knock-down without induction of the non-specific interferon response in mammalian cells. Multiple systems have been developed to introduce siRNAs into mammals. One of the most appealing of these techni