Work on RNA interference brings Nobel triumph

For the second time in five years the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine has gone to researchers working with one of molecular biology's favourite laboratory animals: the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Even more striking is the short interval (eight years) since Andrew Fire and Craig Mello began publishing the work on RNA interference that has now won them the 2006 award. Their findings have already proved valuable in the laboratory and may yet do so in the clinic.

Nobel prize winners Andrew Fire (left) and Craig Mello said in 1998: “The mechanisms underlying RNA …