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Researchers Solve Piece of Large-scale Gene Silencing Mystery


December 4, 2008

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A team led by Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of biology in arts and sciences, has made a breakthrough in understanding the phenomenon of nucleolar dominance, the silencing of an entire parental set of ribosomal RNA genes in a hybrid plant or animal. Since the machinery involved in nucleolar dominance is some of the same machinery that can go haywire in diseases such as cancer, Pikaard and his collaborators' research may have important implications for applied medical research.Full Story

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Washington University in St. Louis

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