Table 2.

Systematic comparison of DNA disruption and RNA interference.

	DNA disruption	RNA interference
Mechanism	Repair of DNA breaks after cleavage by nucleases	Gene silencing at the post-transcriptional level
Target	Genome specific region	mRNA specific region
Mode of manner	Locus-specific	Sequence-specific
Mutation type	Knockout& Knockin& Nucleotide(s) exchange	knockdown
Gene suppression	Complete	Partial
Phenotypic impact	Definite and complete	In varying degrees
Recovery of mutation	Genetic complementation	Resurrection gene with synonymous substitutions
Limitations	Knockout of vital genes may be fatal; Unable to perform gene expression in specific spatiotemporal progress; Multigene knockout is restricted.	Mistakenly silence other genes with high homology to the target gene； Unable to completely revive the knocked down gene and apply it to a large-scale experiment.