| Summary: | Welcome to Silence [1], a new open-access journal devoted to RNA silencing and other pathways directed by non-coding RNAs. Silence springs from the extraordinary, yet brief, history of RNA silencing. In just two decades, we have seen the anomalous properties of plant and fungal transgenes connect with a series of amazing experiments in which injected double-stranded RNA triggered silencing in worms. These diverse lines of research revealed the essence of RNA interference (RNAi), and the importance of these discoveries has been recognized through numerous awards and accolades including a Nobel Prize for Fire and Mello [2,3]. Our current understanding of RNA silencing derives from experiments performed in organisms from three kingdoms, experiments that directly inspired billion-dollar investments by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to use RNA-silencing both to diagnose and to treat disease in humans. Both small interfering RNAs and microRNAblocking antisense oligonucleotides are now in human clinical trials [4]. Some of the first GM plants to be produced exploited RNA silencing, although the mechanisms were not well understood at the time [5,6]. The study of RNA silencing produced enabling technology that allows each gene in a sequenced genome--even cultured human cells--to be knocked out or knocked down, providing a lifeline to functional genomics. There can be no question that RNA silencing research has had an impact! RNA silencing has excited scientists and non-scientists alike: witness front-page headlines in the American and British press [7-10], even before the Nobel Prize. Such interest, of course, reflects the power of RNA silencing as biotechnology. But equally important is that RNA silencing exemplifies the elegant creativity of natural selection. Just as we might gaze in awe at a blue whale in the ocean (how
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