**10. RNAi effect on JE**

Inhibitory effect of RNAi on JEV replication has been thoroughly studied *in vitro* and *in vivo* (Murakami ET AL., 2005). It is also reported that defective interfering (DI) RNA aids in the persistence of JEV (Yoon et al., 2006). Effectiveness of using siRNA expression based vectors targeting the JEV NS5 gene to inhibit JEV replication, viral protein expression, and RNA lev‐ els of JEV E-protein is hot topic of research nowadays. Several studies demonstrate that shRNAs targeting the NS5 gene could specifically and efficiently inhibit JEV replication. Many researchers have shown that siRNA/shRNAs targeting the RdRP coding gene could efficiently inhibit viral replication; the inhibition of viral replication triggered by siRNA/ shRNA targeting of the RdRP gene are reported to be more efficient compared to other genes from the genome (Neyts et al., 1999). Therefore, the NS5 gene which is highly con‐ served among different strains is often employed as an RNAi target for different studies. shRNAs targeting NS5 gene in the JEV genome are shown to be capable of interfering with JEV replication with very high specificity and efficiency. Hence shRNAs could be used as a potential tool against JEV replication *in vitro*. More research investigating RNAi methodolo‐ gies to prevent infection or reduce viremia is necessary which may lead to the development of antiviral compounds that are efficacious and inexpensive against Japanese encephalitis infections (Qi et al., 2008).
