Genome-wide prediction and analysis of siRNA as potential antiviral agent against Hepatitis-C virus

摘要

Hepatitis is a chronic global health disease. Infection caused by Hepatitis-C virus (HCV) has severe effects on the liver of patient resulting in inflammation of liver cells. The virus spreads by contact with contaminated blood and or by sharing contaminated unsterile needles. The HCV RNA poses a great challenge in designing the therapeutics against them because of their fast evolving and unstable nature. Nearly 200 million people are infected worldwide by this chronic disease, which thus leads to many problems like cirrhosis, carcinoma and eventually death of the patient. At present vaccines are not available against HCV. Hence, there is a need to develop therapeutic agents against the virus. In this study, we propose siRNA-based inhibition of HCV by designing a siRNA, which could inhibit the replication of the virus. Initially, a total of 5141 siRNAs are obtained using the siDirect software. On the basis of the i-scores of all the predicted siRNA, 121 are selected as potent siRNAs against the consensus sequences of HCV genome. Finally, we have selected three predicted siRNA, which proved to be targeting the 5'UTR and Core regions of the HCV genome and hence validate the potency and efficacy to silence the viral genome.