Transfection Types, Methods and Strategies: a Technical Review
Transfection types, methods and strategies: a technical review Zhi Xiong Chong1, Swee Keong Yeap2 and Wan Yong Ho1 1 School of Pharmacy, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Semenyih, Selangor, Malaysia 2 China-ASEAN College of Marine Sciences, Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia ABSTRACT Transfection is a modern and powerful method used to insert foreign nucleic acids into eukaryotic cells. The ability to modify host cells’ genetic content enables the broad application of this process in studying normal cellular processes, disease molecular mechanism and gene therapeutic effect. In this review, we summarized and compared the findings from various reported literature on the characteristics, strengths, and limitations of various transfection methods, type of transfected nucleic acids, transfection controls and approaches to assess transfection efficiency. With the vast choices of approaches available, we hope that this review will help researchers, especially those new to the field, in their decision making over the transfection protocol or strategy appropriate for their experimental aims. Subjects Biotechnology, Cell Biology, Molecular Biology Keywords Methods, Nucleic acids, Controls, Efficiency, Chemicals, Transfection INTRODUCTION Transfection is a process by which foreign nucleic acids are delivered into a eukaryotic cell to modify the host cell’s genetic makeup (Kim & Eberwine, 2010; Chow et al., 2016). For the past 30 years, transfection has gained increasing popularity due to its wide application for studying cellular processes and molecular mechanisms of diseases (Arnold et al., Submitted 22 July 2020 2006; Ishida & Selaru, 2012; Chow et al., 2016). Understanding the molecular pathway of Accepted 5 March 2021 fi Published 21 April 2021 disease allows the discovery of speci c biomarkers that may be applied to diagnose and prognose diseases (Ye et al., 2017; Roser et al., 2018).
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