Americans Andrew Z Fire and Craig C Mello won the Nobel Prize in physiology (medicine) today for discovering a method of turning off selected genes - an important research tool that scientists hope will lead to new treatments for HIV, cancer and other illnesses.The Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm honoured the pair for their relatively recent discovery of RNA interference, which it called "a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information." Fire and Mello's findings, published in 1998, opened a new field of research that has helped researchers break down, or silence specific genes.Fire, 47, of Stanford University, and Mello, 45, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, published their seminal work in the journal Nature in 1998. The two men will share the prize, including $1.4 million."It looks very encouraging today, but it's too early to say whether it will find an important place in the therapeutic arsenal against HIV," Goran Hansson, chairman of the prize committee, said.Erna Moller, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska, said their research helped shed new light on a complicated process that had confused researchers for years.
