{"doi":"10.1038/35078107","title":"Duplexes of 21-nucleotide RNAs mediate RNA interference in cultured mammalian cells","abstract":"RNA interference (RNAi) is the process of sequence-specific, post-transcriptional gene silencing in animals and plants, initiated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) that is homologous in sequence to the silenced gene. The mediators of sequence-specific messenger RNA degradation are 21- and 22-nucleotide small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) generated by ribonuclease III cleavage from longer dsRNAs. Here we show that 21-nucleotide siRNA duplexes specifically suppress expression of endogenous and heterologous genes in different mammalian cell lines, including human embryonic kidney (293) and HeLa cells. Therefore, 21-nucleotide siRNA duplexes provide a new tool for studying gene function in mammalian cells and may eventually be used as gene-specific therapeutics.","journal":"Nature","year":2001,"id":8750,"datarank":27.781181399135857,"base_score":9.143131622282732,"endowment":9.143131622282732,"self_citation_contribution":1.3714697433424101,"citation_network_contribution":26.409711655793448,"self_endowment_contribution":1.3714697433424101,"citer_contribution":26.409711655793448,"corpus_percentile":98.0,"corpus_rank":1239,"citation_count":9349,"citer_count":192,"citers_with_citation_signal":192,"citers_with_endowment":192,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2001-05-01","authors":[{"id":75379,"name":"Jens Harborth","orcid":"0009-0006-6530-0372","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75380,"name":"Winfried Lendeckel","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75381,"name":"Abdullah Yalcin","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75382,"name":"Klaus Weber","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75383,"name":"Thomas Tuschl","orcid":"0000-0002-6483-5678","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75384,"name":"Abdullah Yalçın","orcid":"0000-0001-8519-8375","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":75378,"name":"Sayda M. Elbashir","orcid":"0000-0001-6250-9679","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":30,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}