(CNN)Mourners held a heavenly birthday memorial Sunday for Victoria Martens, the 10-year-old New Mexico girl who Albuquerque police say was raped by her mother's boyfriend and then killed while her mother watched.
RNA interference (RNAi) is a natural process that cells use to 'turn off' or silence unwanted or harmful genes. The initial discovery of this phenomenon was in 1991, by scientists trying to deepen the colour of petunias. Surprisingly, by introducing a gene for colour, they found that they had turned off the gene.
RNAs are the direct products of genes, and these small RNAs can bind to other specific messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules and either increase or decrease their activity, for example by preventing an mRNA from producing a protein.NAi is an RNA-dependent gene silencing process that is controlled by the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) and is initiated by short double-stranded RNA molecules in a cell's cytoplasm, where they interact with the catalytic RISC component argonaute.