Figure 6.

Effect of intracellular siRNA half-life on the duration of siRNA-mediated gene silencing in vitro. Curves represent model predictions for luciferase knockdown after transfection with 100 nM siRNA against luciferase on day 0 with a cell doubling time of 1 day (kgrowth = 0.0.029 h⁻¹) and intracellular siRNA half-lives of 24, 48 and 72 h (kdeginna = 0.029, 0.014 and 0.01 h⁻¹). The initial number of cells was 5 × 10⁴, transfection time was 5 h, transfection efficiency was 90%, and all other parameters were kept at their baseline in vitro values given in Table 2.