(CNN)Mourners held a heavenly birthday memorial Sunday for Victoria Martens, the 10-year-old New Mexico girl who Albuquerque police say was raped by her mother's boyfriend and then killed while her mother watched.
RNA interference (RNAi) is a natural process that cells use to 'turn off' or silence unwanted or harmful genes. The initial discovery of this phenomenon was in 1991, by scientists trying to deepen the colour of petunias. Surprisingly, by introducing a gene for colour, they found that they had turned off the gene.
RNA interference, or RNAi, is a common method of post-transcriptional gene silencing. In RNAi, small RNA molecules enter into a protein complex that cleaves specific RNA strands, preventing them from being translated to protein, thereby preventing gene expression.