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Morpholinos Do Not Elicit an Innate Immune Response during Early Xenopus Embryogenesis

Authors: 
Paraiso KD, Blitz IL, Zhou JJ, Cho KWY
Citation: 
Dev Cell. 2019;49(4):643-50. doi:10.1016/j.devcel.2019.04.019
Abstract: 
It has recently been reported that a common side effect of translation-blocking morpholino antisense oligonucleotides is the induction of a set of innate immune response genes in Xenopus embryos and that splicing-blocking morpholinos lead to unexpected off-target mis-splicing events. Here, we present an analysis of all publicly available Xenopus RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data in a reexamination of the effects of translation-blocking morpholinos on the innate immune response. Our analysis does not support the authors’ general conclusion, which was based on a limited number of RNA-seq datasets. Moreover, the strong induction of an immune response appears to be specific to the tbxt/ tbxt2 morpholinos. The more comprehensive study presented here indicates that using morpholinos for targeted gene knockdowns remains of considerable value for the rapid identification of gene function.
Epub: 
Not Epub
Organism or Cell Type: 
Xenopus