人与神

Nobel Prize for Medicine: Silence is golden for US laureates - AFP

U.S. scientists win Nobel for medicine - Reuters

(Extract from Reuters)

....won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of how
to switch off genes, a potential road to new treatments for diseases from
AIDS to blindness and cancer.

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).

RNAi has grown quickly into a hot area of research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, who see it as a promising way of tackling a range of conditions.

"Craig's and my work (concerned) why some genes get turned off," Fire told Reuters.
"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."

The discoveries may lead to methods to stop gene expression in diseases such as cancer, slowing tumour growth.

"The discovery is already being used in clinical trials for viral diseases, for eye diseases, for cardiovascular metabolic diseases," Bertil Fredholm, a member of the
prize-giving Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, told Reuters.

"But even more importantly, it is being used in every drug industry as a fundamental research tool," he added, saying RNAi has "invaded" laboratories
worldwide.

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I have to agree. This is another milestone since the discovery of the structure of DNA.

The possibility of a X-men might be within my life time.... Maybe not. From test tube babies, to designer babies, to cloning and now this. Men can and will enter a new stage of evolution. But as per all instances of Men trying to play God, this will be a start of a downward spiral. Call me a pessimist on this issue if you will.

Power corrupts the minds of petty beings.