Silencing genes — to understand them

Excerpt: “RNAi and other processes may help science understand how life works at the most basic level.”
My comment: Serious scientists already understand how life works at the most basic level.  Viral microRNAs perturb protein folding that links nutrient-dependent microRNAs to DNA repair via the conserved molecular mechanisms that link amino acid substitutions to the biophysically constrained chemistry of protein folding, which is required for genomic stability and increasing organismal complexity.
Fixation of the amino acid substitutions occurs via the nutrient-dependent physiology of reproduction. The physiology of nutrient-dependent reproduction links the light-induced de novo creation of amino acids to RNA-mediated events and cell type differentiation in all cells of all individuals of all genera. The balance of viral microRNAs and nutrient-dependent microRNAs is the key to increasing organismal complexity and physiopathology.
Without mentioning microRNAs, this article refers to them as ‘triggering molecules’ that contain a string of 21 or 22 nucleotides. For comparison, see: MicroRNA control of protein expression noise.
Theoretical physicists and evolutionary theorists seem to consistently ignore the established links from the epigenetic landscape to the physical landscape of DNA in the organized genomes of species from microbes to man.  They are foolish if they think serious scientists will continue to ignore the role of microRNAs that link physics to chemistry and molecular biology. Serious scientists have had enough of pseudoscientific nonsense. Theorists explain nothing, but see:

This explains everything

Excerpt: “If scientists cannot communicate a concept without falling back on maths, they don’t truly grasp what it is they are trying to talk about. It is a failure of the communicator, not of the audience.
My comment: It is the failure to communicate without using maths that led to acceptance of the assumptions of population geneticists and their idiot minions. They based their ridiculous theories on de Vries definition of mutation and ideas about how long it would take an accumulation of mutations to lead to a new species. Their theories led to the stagnation of research that finally links microRNAs to cell type differentiation via the biophysically constrained chemistry of nutrient-dependent RNA-mediated protein folding and fixation of amino acid substitutions via the physiology of reproduction.
Weinberg, and others like him, think that maths can explain top-down causation in the context of biology and the controlled physiology of reproduction. They explain nothing and tout only pseudoscientific nonsense. For contrast, see:
1996  “Small intranuclear proteins also participate in generating alternative splicing techniques of pre-mRNA and, by this mechanism, contribute to sexual differentiation in at least two species, Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans…”
2003 “First, more sophisticated models of nonsynonymous evolution are required, specifically those that allow a limited number of sites to accumulate the vast majority of changes, as may be true of viruses in nature, as well as those that take account of RNA and protein secondary structure (15).”

New target for anticancer drugs—RNA