Researchers solve piece of large-scale gene silencing mystery
PikaardA team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has made a breakthrough in understanding the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, the silencing of an entire parental set of ribosomal RNA genes in a hybrid plant or animal. Since the machinery involved in nucleolar dominance is some of the same machinery that can go haywire in diseases such as cancer, Pikaard and his collaborators’ research may have important implications for applied medical research. Click here for a podcast from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News: Interview with Craig Pikaard.
New gene silencing pathway found in plants
Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes. A team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has published a paper this month in Cell, that explains how RNA polymerases work together to use the non-coding region of DNA to prevent destructive, virus-derived genes from being activated.