It has been a privilege to watch the growth of RNA interference technology over the last ten years. Starting with a mixture of curiosity and chagrin, the field has grown into a substantial enterprise which impacts (and utilizes resources from) virtually every field of biomedical research. Research in RNAi derives from a set of apparently unconnected observations: strange pigment patterns in plants, unexpected failures and successes in antisense and overexpression studies, small regulatory RNAs in bacteria. If there is an underlying and recurring scientific lesson, it has been: “Pursue the unexpected.” Basic and applied research each advance as a consequence of this pursuit; certainly this has been no.
