Citations of our Nucleic Acids Research Paper
Our 2014 Nucleic Acids Research paper provides an excellent overview of the siPOOL technology. Google Scholar shows that our paper has been cited 64 times.
To put this into perspective, the 2012 PLoS One paper on C911 controls by Buehler et al. has 72 citations. C911 controls are probably the most effective way to determine whether a single-siRNA phenotype is due to an off-target effect.
These citation numbers show that siPOOLs have good mind share when researchers consider the issue of RNAi off-target effects.
We have noticed, however, that in some cases our NAR paper is cited to justify approaches that we do not endorse.
For example, two recent papers (1, 2) cite our paper as support for the use of Dharmacon ON-TARGETplus 4-siRNA pools to reduce the potential for off-target effects.
Our paper shows, however, that high-complexity siRNA pools (> 15 siRNAs) are needed to reliably reduce off-target effects.
We have also discussed how low-complexity siRNA pools can in fact exacerbate off-target effects.
There’s an old saying that any publicity is good publicity, and we are certainly thankful that these authors have referenced our paper, even if we don’t agree with the interpretations.
And we are especially grateful to all the researchers who have purchased siPOOLs and referred to our products in their publications.
