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Nature Cell Biology 6, 696–697 (1 August 2004) | doi:10.1038/ncb0804-696

Loss of Dicer fowls up centromeres

Sharon A. White & Robin C. Allshire

RNA interference (RNAi) is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism whereby double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) target homologous transcripts for degradation. Long dsRNAs are cleaved by the endonuclease Dicer to produce small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) of around 21 nucleotides in length.