Brown Anthony E, Catteruccia Flaminia
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Biotechniques. 2006 Apr;Suppl:38-44. doi: 10.2144/000112117.
The discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) is one of the most significant of recent years, with potential for application beyond the laboratory to the clinic. As a tool for functional genomics, RNAi has permitted the characterization of genes in organisms that had previously remained recalcitrant to targeted gene manipulation. Efforts to understand its mode of action have revealed a central role in gene regulation and host defense. Finally, as a therapeutic tool, it has shown enormous promise in the control of a large array of diseases. Here we examine how RNAi is revolutionizing malaria research in an organism, the Anopheles mosquito, that until recently was essentially resistant to genetic study, and show how its application in both the mosquito vector and the Plasmodium parasite might ultimately lead to new ways of controlling and perhaps even eradicating this devastating disease.
RNA干扰（RNAi）的发现是近年来最为重大的发现之一，具有从实验室应用到临床的潜力。作为功能基因组学的一种工具，RNAi使得那些以前难以进行靶向基因操作的生物体中的基因得以被鉴定。对其作用方式的研究揭示了它在基因调控和宿主防御中的核心作用。最后，作为一种治疗工具，它在控制多种疾病方面显示出了巨大的前景。在此，我们探讨RNAi如何正在彻底改变对疟蚊（一种直到最近基本上还对遗传学研究具有抗性的生物体）的疟疾研究，并展示其在蚊媒和疟原虫中的应用如何最终可能带来控制乃至根除这种毁灭性疾病的新方法。
