Dr. Craig Mello from University of Massachusetts Medical School and Dr. Andrew Fire of Stanford are sharing this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Their discovery of RNA interference, a gene silencing mechanism by double-stranded RNA, was originally published in Nature in 1998.
From the Nobel Foundation’s announcement:
This mechanism, RNA interference, is activated when RNA molecules occur as double-stranded pairs in the cell. Double-stranded RNA activates biochemical machinery which degrades those mRNA molecules that carry a genetic code identical to that of the double-stranded RNA. When such mRNA molecules disappear, the corresponding gene is silenced and no protein of the encoded type is made.
RNA interference occurs in plants, animals, and humans. It is of great importance for the regulation of gene expression, participates in defense against viral infections, and keeps jumping genes under control. RNA interference is already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and it may lead to novel therapies in the future.
To learn more about the discovery that will forever change genetics and medicine, go to RNA INTERFERENCE article at the Nobel Foundation website…
The press release…
Learn all about RNAi, an advance we’ve been publicizing for some time now. And read Mello’s perspective on the discovery in this Ambion interview…
NOTE: These are days to bask in the reflection of greatness for Medgadget, as we are still flush from bumping into Engadget founder Peter Rojas at Wired’s NextFest (consensus: we’ve blogged it all before). As cool as meeting him was, however, it pales next to the feeling of learning that the tall guy, the one with the hair, who worked in the lab just down the hall from you, has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
Yes, that guy, Craig Mello. Also, Andrew Fire of Stanford. Fire & Mello — it sounds like a college rock band but in fact they’re a scientific team that’s discovered a powerful tool for research, and potentially a therapy.
Picture caption: Phenotypic effect after injection of single-stranded or double-stranded unc-22 RNA into the gonad of C. elegans. The unc-22 gene encodes a myofilament protein. Decrease in unc-22 activity is known to produce severe twitching movements. Injected double-stranded RNA, but not single-stranded RNA, induced the twitching phenotype in the progeny.
Flashbacks: RNAi disrupts Hepatitis, RNAi goes too far…
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