The RNAi Consortium, or TRC, is a public-private partnership whose mission is to create libraries of small hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) for 15'000 human and 15'000 mouse genes. These libraries should help the scientific community to analyse gene function by RNAi. The consortium is based at the Broad Institute of the MIT and Harvard University, and includes 6 MIT- and Harvard-associated institutions and 5 international life sciences organizations. Verified RNAi clones and entire libraries are made available both by Sigma-Aldrich and Open Biosystems.