Dicer is a ribonuclease RNase III-like enzyme that processes long double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) or pre-microRNA hairpin precursors into small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) or microRNA (miRNAs). These short 21-23-nt products of Dicer digestion are then loaded into the RNA induced silencing complex (RISC) directing sequence specific mRNA cleavage and post-transcriptional gene regulation. Dicer has been found in nearly all eukaryotes studied thus far. Human Dicer is a 220-kDa protein that contains substrate recognition Piwi Argonaute Zwille (PAZ) domain, two catalytic RNAse III-like domains, dsRNA binding domain, an ATPse/RNA helicase domain and a DUF283 domain of unknown function. Human recombinant Dicer cleaves large dsRNAs into random pools of 20- to 21-base pair siRNAs (d-siRNAs) which are capable of specifically silencing gene expression (1).
Genlantis Human Recombinant Dicer and Turbo Dicer Enzyme kits use an ultra-active form of human recombinant dicer enzyme that can cleave more than 95% of dsRNA template into 22 bp siRNAs within 12 hours (Dicer) and 2 hours (Turbo Dicer) under optimized reaction conditions. This provides sufficient siRNAs in every single species to achieve effective gene silencing.
1. Myers, J.W., Jones, J.T., Meyer, T., Ferrell. J. 2003. Recombinant Dicer efficiently converts large dsRNAs into siRNAs suitable for gene silencing. Nature Biotechnology, 21, 324-328.