When scientists locate the genetic sequence of a particular gene that is known to be linked to a specific disease, they can use antisense therapy to synthesize a strand of nucleic acid; this can be either DNA, RNA or a chemical analogue that binds to the messenger RNA produced by the particular genes. This will inactivate the gene, due to the fact that mRNA has to be single stranded to be translated. Alternatively, the strand may also be targeted to bind a splicing site on pre-mRNA; this will modify the exon content of an mRNA. The synthesised nucleic acid is now call "anti-sense" oligonucleotide because its base sequence is complementary to the gene's messenger RNA (mRNA); the complementary genes messenger RNA is called the "sense" sequence. An example of this may be a sense segment of mRNA " 5'-AAGGUC-3' " would be blocked by the anti-sense mRNA segment " 3'-UUCCAG-5'.
Antisense Therapy Technology
The synthesising of antisense nucleotides that are complementary to the required mRNA sequence is actually quite simple. Once the mRNA that is made from DNA strand, it binds to the original mRNA sequence which contains the disease. The mRNA antisense complex carries the disease and now cannot become a protein now due to the fact it it cannot move into translation. This will ultimately stop the disease cells from forming and eventually kill the disease.