The Passano Foundation, Inc.

Press Release
2 October 2006

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2006 jointly to Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello for their discovery of "RNA interference gene silencing by double-stranded RNA".

Dr. Fire was the recipient of the 2003 Passano Award for discovering a new fundamental mechanism of gene regulation known as RNA interference (RNAi). Dr. Fire played a major role in revealing that organisms from plants to humans utilize RNA duplexes to direct the destruction of of messenger RNAs containing a homologous nucleotide sequence. Introducing experimentally synthesized trigger RNAs into cells provides a method for inactivating specific genes that is being widely applied across the entire spectrum of biological and biomedical research.

Press Release
4 October 2006

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2006 to
Roger D. Kornberg, Stanford University, "for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription".

Dr. Kornberg was the recipient of the 1982 Passano Award for his contributions to the current understanding of the structure of chromatin.