Silencing assay shows that small RNAs can initiate epigenetic gene repression
Marc Bühler and his team at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) have elucidated the mechanism underlying small RNA-mediated gene silencing, thus solving a mystery which has been puzzling the research community for over a decade. Back in 2002, the discovery by several research groups that small RNA molecules can shut down clearly defined genome regions was hailed by Science as the Breakthrough of the Year. There was great excitement, as scientists now appeared to have a tool that would allow them to influence the genome without directly modifying the DNA. However, as the years went by and efforts to explain the mechanism in detail proved difficult, the initial excitement gave way to frustration. FMI Group leader Marc Bühler recalls: 'Contradictory data, papers withdrawn - we were making little progress. For a while, I'd also given up hope that we'd ever get to the bottom of this.' But they succeeded. As the scientists report in Nature today, a group of proteins known as the Paf1 complex (Paf1C) - itself part of the RNA polymerase complex - prevents small RNA molecules from silencing sections of the genome.
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