Drs. Craig Mello and Andrew Fire of U Mass, and Stanford respectively, have won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine. The duo wins the Nobel for their discovery of RNAi, which is implicated in turning genes on and off. RNAi or interference due to bits of RNA is a relatively new discovery. Mello and Fire, working with C. elegans model, discovered that unlike the conventional belief (that RNA simply acts as a messenger of the code present in the DNA), RNA can play a role in turning certain genes on and off. Since the discovery, RNAi have been found to be present a wide range of plants and animals.
It is postulated that RNAi and dsRNA (double stranded RNA) potentially could be used as a theraputic treatments. Several companies, including Merck are interested in this new technology, but it will be a while before we start seeing drugs on the market.
