The two Americans who discovered how to switch off genes at will have won the 2006 Nobel prize for medicine. The technology has opened up the potential for powerful new medical treatments by controlling parts of a person's genetic code.
Prof Craig Mello (45) and Prof Andrew Fire (47) are among the youngest recipients of a Nobel in recent history. Their work was only published in 1998, and the Nobel award so soon after is indicative of the importance of their discoveries. They share a prize of 10 million Swedish crowns (€1.14 million).
Through experiments with worms, the two showed that a double strand of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, the genetic messenger of the cell, can "silence" targeted genes in a process known as RNA interference (RNAi).
The technique makes it possible to intervene directly to turn off a gene, blocking the proteins it produces. Many diseases arise because mutations in single or groups of genes disturb normal activities within a cell.
"Craig's and my work [ studied] why some genes get turned off," Prof Fire said yesterday. "We were trying to manipulate them and we found certain things could turn them off very efficiently . . . Knowing the genes doesn't tell you what they do, so if you start to turn them off you can start to learn what they do."
RNAi has grown quickly as a research subject and is of particular interest to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. They view it as a promising new way of tackling a wide range of medical conditions, from Alzheimer's disease to Aids and cures for cancer to certain types of blindness.
Prof Mello is professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Prof Andrew Fire is professor of biology in the departments of pathology and genetics at Stanford University, California.
Irish experts described RNAi as a hugely important technology in the development of powerful new medical therapies.
"It can be used as a way to control gene expression," said Prof Kevin Devine of Trinity College's department of genetics. "It can be used for therapies to inhibit unwanted messages in the cell," he added.
(additional reporting Reuters)