Downward Julian
Signal Transduction Laboratory, Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, 44 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PX, United Kingdom.
Cell. 2005 Jun 17;121(6):813-5. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2005.06.002.
RNA interference has been promoted as an ideal tool for functional genomics, but to date the success stories have principally been in model organisms. Two papers in this issue of Cell change all that: use of RNA interference libraries targeting large proportions of the human genome to uncover two novel tumor suppressor genes. REST is a transcriptional repressor that silences neuron-specific gene expression, and PITX1 is a homeodomain transcription factor that promotes the expression of a negative regulator of Ras.
RNA干扰已被推崇为功能基因组学的理想工具，但迄今为止，成功案例主要集中在模式生物中。本期《细胞》杂志上的两篇论文改变了这一局面：利用针对人类基因组很大一部分的RNA干扰文库发现了两个新的肿瘤抑制基因。REST是一种转录抑制因子，可使神经元特异性基因表达沉默，而PITX1是一种同源域转录因子，可促进Ras负调控因子的表达。
