How was RNA interference (RNAi) discovered?
The first indication in 1990 of the existence of the RNAi phenomenon was in work completed by Jorgenson and Mol in a plant model system. Petunias that had an additional copy of a native pigment gene somehow seemed to block the expression of both the native and the inserted pigment gene, called co-suppression. A few years later, working in tobacco, another group found that viruses could trigger the suppression of specific genes. The term RNAi interference was coined in a 1998 Fire et. al Nature paper, after the discovery in the labs of Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello that injecting dsRNA into C. elegans led to the silencing of expression of those specific genes homologous to the dsRNA delivered.
