Annals of Oncology 13:1513-1514, 2002
© 2002 European Society for Medical Oncology
News |
RNA interference, a way ahead, not only to change the colour of flowers?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), which was initially considered a bizarre phenomenon limited to petunias and a few other plant species, is now one of the hottest topics in molecular biology. In the last few years, it has become clear that this phenomenon occurs in both plants and animals and has roles in viral defense and transposon silencing mechanisms. Perhaps most exciting, however, is the emerging use of PTGS and, in particular, RNA interference (RNAi)— PTGS initiated by the introduction of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)—as a tool to knock out expression of specific genes in a variety of organisms. This mechanism has been the object of a series of remarkable review articles in Le Monde. Richard Jorgensen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, was the first to observe the phenomenon, while studying the mechanism leading to the colour of petunias. Andrew Fire (Carnegie Institute, Washington), published 8 years later in
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