Rna Silencing

摘要

When Nature published the first Insight on RNA interference (RNAi), in September 2004, it was clear that RNAi was going to have a broad impact on biology, even though only six years had passed since the seminal paper by Andrew Fire, Craig Mello and colleagues was published. But who would have imagined how far we would come in the next four years in terms of understanding and exploiting this fundamental system of gene regulation? There is now a much clearer picture of how the small non-coding RNAs involved in this type of regulation are generated, drawn from the static images provided by crystallographic studies, together with the kinetic and mechanistic details gleaned through biochemical assays. From large-scale efforts to map how gene expression is affected by just one class of these small RNAs, microRNAs, it is easy to reach the conclusion that when studying any biological process, researchers must consider how it is regulated by small RNAs. Relationships between small RNAs and development are also being uncovered almost daily. And nimble biotechnology firms have, with breathtaking speed, aggressively translated this knowledge into therapeutic candidates.