“RNA interference not only promises to explain biological mysteries, but is also turning out to be a powerful research tool and a potential new source of medical breakthroughs. Like so much of biology these days, this is a story of migraine-inducing complexity.”

U.S. News and World Report, March 3, 2003

RNA interference (RNAi) [aka post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS)]

From Nature 418:244

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Quality control: nonsense-mediated decay

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Organism Number of genes

Virus 8-200

E. coli ~4000

Yeast 6241

C. elegans (nematodes) 18, 424

Drosophila (fruit fly) 13,601

Arabidopsis (plant) ~25, 000

Human ~33,000

Human ~ 24, 000 genes

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