ABSTRACT

From the perspective of human biology, medical research, and clinical applications, genetic manipulation of human cells and other mammalian cells is especially relevant and important, and so the great bulk of this chapter is focused on this aspect. Genetic manipulation of animal cells often involves transferring genetic material into cultured cells, but sometimes the recipient cells are single cells or cells within a living model organism or person. In this chapter, the authors describe the basic principles and technologies for transferring genetic material into intact mammalian cells. The artificial transfer of genetic material into mammalian cells is known as transgenesis. As general methods for delivering genetic material to mammalian cells, non-viral transfer methods have two principal advantages over viral methods. The most widely used method to assess gene function in cultured mammalian cells exploits RNA interference, a natural cellular pathway where the formation of double-stranded RNA induces specific gene inactivation.