Abstract
The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for discovering “RNA interference—genesilencing by double-stranded RNA”. The Nobel Committee at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden selected them for the award for unraveling “a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information” that is “already being widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and may lead to novel therapies in the future”. This has been one of the fastest Nobel Prizes conferred in physiology or medicine, considering that Fire and Mello published their path-breaking article in the journal Nature in 1998, less than ten years ago.
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Utpal Nath is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc. His laboratory is studying the genetic mechanisms of plant development.
Saumitra Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, IISc. His laboratory is interested in the translational control of cellular and viral RNA.
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Nath, U., Das, S. Silence of the genes. Reson 12, 6–18 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-007-0034-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-007-0034-1