Understanding interference
In a discovery that might eventually lead to new biomedical treatments for disease, researchers from Harvard’s Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology have identified two types of RNA that are able to move between cells as part of a process called RNA-interference (RNAi). RNAi can turn off, or silence, specific genes in plants and animals, and is initiated by introducing long, double-stranded RNA molecules into cells or tissues. Those molecules are then chopped up into small fragments, which act as sequence-specific signals to guide the silencing machinery to the target, effectively silencing the corresponding gene. Though researchers have long known that such signals can spread, silencing the targeted gene in all cells in the animal, this work demonstrates that the mobile silencing signal is RNA. Three researchers, Craig Hunter, professor of molecular and cellular biology, Antony M. Jose, a former postdoctoral fellow and tutor in biochemical sciences and a recently appointed assistant...