RNAi: an ever-growing puzzle

In recent years, sequence-specific gene silencing has been an area of increasing focus, both because of its interesting biology and because of its power as an experimental tool. A growing understanding of one such phenomenon, RNA interference (RNAi), has provided clues that many homology-dependent gene-silencing mechanisms share a common trigger, double-stranded RNA. Recent findings that RNAi and related pathways are involved not only in the response to exogenous pathogenic and endogenous parasitic nucleic acids but also in basic cellular processes, such as gene regulation and heterochromatin formation, have further fueled interest in this rapidly expanding field.