488 SIDELINES NEWS J. BURTON/NATUREPL.COM were crazy. ButIdid. I would have saidyou threats inacaselike this, I would have death decision ofaschoolboard inDover, happened whenhestruckdown the Judge JohnJonesisstunnedby what “ all. Moon, didn’tfluffhislinesafter Armstrong, thefirst manonthe Computer analysis shows thatNeil “ ON THERECORD Sources: Kansas.com, Reuters SCORECARD yet tofindapublisher. or control cats.The research has volunteers, stroking experimental cats are for real? Ten blindfolded confirmation” thatthe$4,000 Allerca obtain“independent three catswithmutatedallergen breeding? Itstumbledacross the firmavoid years ofselective all inamere 18months.How did than usingtransgenic methods, kitties were bred naturally rather making muchofthefact thatits proven hypoallergenic cats”,is world’sof “the first scientifically Allerca ofSanDiego, purveyor Allergy-free kittens OVERHYPED design inschools. Pennsylvania, toteachintelligent sky, despiteafew clouds. unprecedented view ofthenight were switched togive off localsan into darknesslastweek aslights accommodate dateswith3digits. onboard software could only to lastjust90days, sothe of exploring —itwas built as itreached 1,000 days for leap formankind. If you hadtoldme That’s onesmallstep a man,onegiant Endurance Reykjavik was plunged Iceland’s capital Astronomy caused joy andpanic Mars rover Opportunity proteins during work. Andhow did pre-testing for the gene-silencing most ofthehard sidestepping method itwas use, neatly preparing to ” ” or RNAi. When a gene is to be expressed, it expressed, be to is gene a When RNAi. or or Medicine has Prize inPhysiology lated that organisms mecha- might this use ments on amuscle gene nematode inthe and inherited can by be even progeny. of itself made, to can be spread cells between double-stranded RNA can cause more copies showedothers Andthey hadbelieved. that the treatment,the rather than masked being as showeders also that mRNA wasdestroyed by worms lacking muscle the gene. Theresearch- awkwardly,worms twitched mutant just like injected with double-stranded the RNA, the stuck together, asdouble-stranded RNA. When required and sense the antisense RNAs to be showed that and apowerful consistent effect worm with ‘sense’ wasseen same effect the RNA. and inconsistent.was modest And, confusingly, genes up taken when cific by acell. But effect the complements mRNA the —could silencespe- RNA sequence whose molecule — an artificial (A. Fire tion double-stranded by specific forms of RNA that mRNAs these cantargeted be for destruc- Fire and Mello, and colleagues, demonstrated through paper, published in plementary to that of the gene. In their break- RNA (mRNA), which hasastructure com- sis machinery. ismessenger Theintermediary instructions tosends cell’s the protein synthe- in treating human disease. research and may, future, inthe prove useful thata discovery hastransformed biological Worcester. are forties. It intheir Both honours University of Massachusetts Medical Center in versity, California, and Craig Mello, now at the Uni- Stanford at now gone to Andrew Fire, expression. gene of control damental demonstrated afun- time after they impressively short young scientists, an by two unusually holm wasreceived The call from Stock- Nobel forRNAcontrol ofgenes Youthful duosnagsaswift In the the In ofIn simple aseries and elegant experi- ‘antisense’ that knew already Researchers iscalledRNAThe discovery interference, The 2006Nobel Caenorhabditis elegans Caenorhabditis et al. Nature Nature ©

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P Silence isgolden: Craig andAndrew Mello(left) Fire. u b 806–811;1998). l i s h i Nature , Fire and Mello n g G r o u in1998, p infections, at insimple least organisms. Alison Abbott gapthe unusually short?” young,” “I too news. the seem hesaid. “And isn’t Nobelthe not webcast, long after hehadheard won, the joke so hadto dropped.” be Swedish accent. “But we then heard hehadreally to callFireasked hispostdoc inapronounced on morning the of announcement the Plasterk he didn’t it think would For soon. so be alaugh, he felt that aNobel wasaround corner. the But of Molecular inCambridge, Biology UK, says werethey young researchers at Laboratory the Netherlands,in the worked who with Fire when hensively RNAi asthe technique has. invaded research labs just asfast and compre- ofreaction gene —amethod amplification that for his1985invention chain of polymerase the Nobel.1993 chemistry That prize wasawarded Mullis’s Kary of reminiscent is paper, their of award, given just eight years after publication after relevant the discovery. TheFire and Mello activitythe of genes that cause disease. pinned on ways finding RNAi to use to reduce thing from ageing to cancer. Clinicalhopes are genes involved tohave find used been inevery- Firethe and Mello discovery. RNAi reagents New York, joined who RNAi the élite after soon ing,” says Tom Tuschl of Rockerfeller University, RNAi to turn off the genes that they are study- worms but innearly allother species. and shown to apply to allgenes —not just in The RNAi pathway fully worked hasbeen out after have them, field details. inthe sincefilled that of many the the researchers flooded who Fire and Mello’s subsequent research, and Mello on stunned interviewed when seemed Utrecht of University the of Plasterk Ronald Most Nobel prizes are given many years ishardly“There alab not using tools of the NATURE | Vol 443 expression of their their of expression nism tocontrol gene function. It is function. gene genome anddisrupt throughout the insert themselves ing genes’, which can of controlling ‘jump- be an important way RNAi turned out to true.shown tobe soon genes —afact protect against viral thought tohelp also | 5 October2006 ■

STANFORD UNIV.; UNIV. OF MASSACHUSETTS