A Remarkable History

and everybody will be able to enjoy the book, and not RNAi was coined half a dozen years ago to describe just those who are quite happy primarily going through a completely mysterious phenomenon in C. elegans the book by jumping from one tremendously good figure whereby injection of either sense or antisense RNA effi-to another. ciently inhibited gene function. The following year Andy As all good things in life take time, we also hope the Fire, Craig Mello, and colleagues showed that the initiat-next edition will be able to include a few words (and ing agent was actually double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), many impressive pictures) about the structures and that it acted posttranscriptionally, and that the silencing mechanisms of enzymes that modify histones and chro-effect could spread between cells (Fire et al. A similar process called post-is only so much one can present in 282 pages. And transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) that also spreads overall, the author does a great job at conveying his systemically had been carefully documented in trans-enthusiasm for structural biology. He succeeds in show-genic and virus-infected plants and is now recognized ing us the giant leaps that have been made in this field, to be RNAi (reviewed in Waterhouse et al., Nature 411, and leaves us with much thirst for more. 834–842, 2001). PTGS defective mutants are sensitive It is 50 years since the momentous publication of the to viral infection and plant viruses have activities that structure of the DNA helix by Jim Watson and Francis hinder PTGS, providing compelling evidence that the Crick. This represented a great moment in our century's systemic spread of silencing information provides se-scientific achievements. But we do not forget that it is quence-specific immunity to uninfected cells. A similarly also 50 years ago that Max Perutz succeeded in incorpo-satisfactory explanation for systemic silencing in C. ele-rating mercury heavy atoms into hemoglobin crystals. gans has not yet been proposed, although analysis of Together with the many bright stars he and others fos-the process has identified a membrane protein that tered and recruited over the years, he thus helped to transports dsRNA into cells (Winston et al., Science 295, release a tidal wave in biology whose goal it was to standing of the enormous complexities of structure, of a deluge of reports as group after group showed that biogenesis and of the functions of living organisms both RNAi was effective in …