Image: Courtesy of Frank Slack |
Andrew Fire and colleagues first described RNA interference (RNAi) in Caenorhabditis elegans in 1998.1 Exogenous double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) injected into cells effectively induced silencing of an endogenous gene complementary to the injected RNA. Since then, scientists have used RNAi to silence genes in several organisms, and biotech companies have introduced products to assist them.2,3 In recent months, a number of groups have published data linking the RNAi pathway to a newly discovered class of small RNAs, called microRNAs (miRNAs), the functions of which are largely unknown.
The discovery of these small RNAs in a...
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