RNA Interference

RNAi emerged out of the pioneering work of Andrew Fire and Craig Mello in the nematode, C. elegans. Attempting to use antisense RNA to knock down gene expression, they found synergistic effects on gene silencing when antisense and sense RNA strands where delivered together. While at first RNAi seemed a peculiarity of nematodes, dsRNA dependent gene silencing has since become one of the biggest surprises in the past decade of research in eukaryotic cells. The core machinery that underlies RNAi is conserved in virtually every experimental eukaryotic system and has been co-opted in most of them to trigger gene silencing.