Nevertheless, RNAi by feeding has several distinct advantages over microinjection. First, because feeding is far less labor-intensive than injection, it is extremely convenient for performing RNAi on a large number of worms. In this regard, RNAi by feeding has proved particularly useful in genetic screens to identify C. elegans genes involved in the RNAi mechanism [6]. Second, for the same reason, feeding is useful for performing RNAi on large numbers of genes. And third, feeding is considerably less expensive than injection and results in a durable reagent (a bacterial strain expressing dsRNA corresponding to a gene of interest) which can be reused to reproduce an RNAi phenotype easily and inexpensively.
