Post-transcriptional gene silencing by double-stranded RNA

Imagine being able to knock out your favourite gene with only a day's work. Not just in, one model system, but in virtually any organism: plants, flie s, mice or cultured cells. This sort of experimental dream might one day be come reality as we learn to harness the power of RNA interference, the proc ess by which double-stranded RNA induces the silencing of homologous endoge nous genes. How this phenomenon works is slowly becoming clear, and might h elp us to develop an effortless tool to probe gene function in cells and an imals.