Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, New York 11724, USA. hannon@cshl.edu
The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) may well be one of the transforming events in biology in the past decade. RNAi can result in gene silencing or even in the expulsion of sequences from the genome. Harnessed as an experimental tool, RNAi has revolutionized approaches to decoding gene function. It also has the potential to be exploited therapeutically, and clinical trials to test this possibility are already being planned.