What is antisense technology?

The antisense RNA technology simply involves the synthesis of RNA molecules that are complementary to the mRNA molecules produced by transcription of a given gene. Usually this antisense RNA will not contain the regulatory sequences required for translation but even if it does it will not usually specify a functional product. Instead most antisense RNAs contain multiple termination codons in all three reading frames. However, when antisense RNA molecules are present in the same cytosol with sense (mRNA) molecules of a gene, the antisense RNA and mRNA molecules will anneal to form duplex RNA molecules. These duplex RNA molecules cannot be translated thus, the presence of antisense RNA will block translation of the mRNA of the affected gene.