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September 19, 2007
The 2007 Prime Minister’s Prize
for Science has been awarded to two
CSIRO scientists for their
discovery and development of a gene silencing mechanism that is
causing a revolution in crop, medical and livestock research
around the world.
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Dr
Peter Waterhouse and
Dr Ming-Bo Wang examining
barley in a glasshouse |
CSIRO Plant Industry researchers Dr Peter Waterhouse and Dr
Ming-Bo Wang discovered double-stranded RNA-induced gene
silencing in plants, a naturally occurring mechanism evolved to
turn down or switch off the activity of genes, following an
observation made while working to understand how plants protect
themselves from virus attack.
Gene silencing has since been developed into a highly effective
tool for gene discovery and determining gene function in humans,
animals, plants and insects.
“Once we found the gene silencing mechanism we knew we were onto
something big. We felt confident that if we could learn how to
direct it, we would be able to control different types of plant
genes for different purposes,” Dr Waterhouse said.
The Canberra-based team’s first success was when they used gene
silencing to enable plant genes to resist diseases, including
Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus, which can cause yield losses of about
15-25 per cent in cereals such as wheat and barley.
“Since then we’ve worked to improve the efficiency of our
technology, making it an extremely precise, rapid and
user-friendly tool for identifying genes and their function,” Dr
Waterhouse said.
“Once we found the gene silencing mechanism we knew we were onto
something big.”
Dr Peter WaterhouseThe CSIRO gene silencing technology is
currently used in more than 3,000 laboratories around the world
on a diverse range of projects, including developing new crop
varieties, and it holds tremendous promise as a therapeutic
agent to control disease in humans and animals.
“CSIRO’s Food Futures Flagship is using our technology to
develop oilseeds with a high omega-3 content and wheat with high
levels of resistant starch, both of which are important for
human health,” Dr Wang said.
“Overseas examples include a national program to develop rice
that is resistant to rice stripe virus in China, improving the
yield and nutritional value of cassava in Africa and a US
project using the technology to make antibodies in plants for
the treatment of human diseases including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
and inflammatory conditions such as arthritis.”
The $300,000 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science, the nation’s
premier science award, is presented to Australian scientists who
promote human welfare through an outstanding achievement in
science or technology. |
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