Does it describe a new discovery or a new methodology that's useful to others?

No, but it does help us to understand the mechanistic basis of a widely used methodology. 

  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

RNA interference is a mechanism of gene silencing that can be triggered by double-stranded RNA.  This is an unusual form of RNA that can result from viral infection and can be characteristic of certain repetitive elements in the genome.  Double-stranded RNA can also be supplied to cells to permit manipulation of gene expression.  In short, we can use dsRNA to switch off the expression of genes at will.  The highly cited paper describes a protein that is part of this machinery.  It is important because an understanding of the RNAi machinery has led to a much greater understanding of the biological impact of RNAi pathways and has led to an ability to exploit this pathway as an experimental and also potentially as a therapeutic tool.

  How did you become involved in this research?

We initially became interested in RNAi because we wanted to understand the mechanism underlying this gene silencing phenomena.  The paper represents one step in a long path toward this goal.

Gregory Hannon, Professor
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA