For geneticists, interference becomes an asset
By John Travis
A powerful way to learn a gene’s role is to watch how a cell or animal changes when the gene fails. To this end, biologists have used chemicals, X rays, and viruses to introduce mutations.
Their latest trick for disrupting genes is a technique called RNA interference, or RNAi, and a new study offers the first evidence that it works in mammalian cells.
In the February Nature Cell Biology, two investigators from the University of Cambridge in England describe using the new technique to turn off genes in mouse eggs and early embryos.