Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Discoveries over the past decade portend a paradigm shift in molecular biology; evidence suggests that RNA is not only functional as a messenger between DNA and protein but also involved in the regulation of genome organization and gene expression. This Timeline article surveys the emergence of the previously unsuspected world of regulatory RNA from a historical perspective.