Along with Dr. Andrew Fire of Stanford University Dr. Mello shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi represents a cellular search engine essential for viability in both plants and animals. Cells load short pieces of genetic code onto RNAi search engines to find and regulate matching information. Importantly, researchers can employ synthetic RNAi search queries to regulate the expression of genes, providing for many potential RNAi therapeutic and biotech applications now under development.