ISTOCK, ADVENTTRHad Xi Zhou known what he was in for a few years ago, he might never have gone looking for RNA interference (RNAi) in mammals. “At that time we are very young and kind of naive,” he says of himself and his collaborators.
But Zhou, a biologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, was intrigued by two 2013 papers that presented evidence of an RNAi response against viruses in mouse embryonic stem cells, baby hamster kidney cells, and newborn mice. He’d also read with interest the responses of skeptics in the field, and he set out to design a study that would address some of their criticisms.
The result, published in June in Immunity, together with other recent work, has helped to shift the debate between proponents and skeptics of the idea that mammals, like plants and invertebrates, can use small interfering RNAs to mount a defense against viruses. But it took more than a year of failed experiments for Zhou’s team to get there.
RNAi ...
