Researcher

Craig Mello

Profile

Craig Mello is an American molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Andrew Fire for the discovery of RNA interference. Mello's work using Caenorhabditis elegans as a model organism was critical in demonstrating that double-stranded RNA triggers potent, sequence-specific gene silencing, a process that is now understood to be a widespread defense mechanism against viral infections and transposable elements in eukaryotes. He went on to elucidate many of the molecular players in the RNAi pathway, including the Argonaute proteins and the DICER endonuclease, work that has guided the rational design of therapeutic siRNA molecules. Mello continues to investigate small RNA pathways and their roles in development and genome defense. The RNAi field that his work helped launch is now a major sector of biopharmaceuticals, with multiple FDA-approved drugs. Science buyers from pharma, diagnostics, and agricultural biotech follow his laboratory's work for advances in gene silencing technologies applicable to human therapeutics and crop improvement.

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