sOPTiKD and sOPTiKO each presents distinct advantages. On the one hand, the ability to control the level of knockdown using sOPTiKD allows the study of genes for which complete loss-of-function induces cell death, and facilitates the examination of gene dosage mechanisms. On the other hand, phenotypic studies following full gene knockout using sOPTiKO are more relevant in the case of genes that are still functional even when expressed at low levels. Moreover, sOPTiKO is applicable not only to genes, but also to non-coding genomic regulatory regions, which could represent a majority of disease-associated genetic traits (Cooper and Shendure, 2011).
