Andrew Zachary Fire

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Three Soldiers, novel by John Dos Passos, published in 1921.

The effect of the World War upon the characters of ordinary doughboys is shown in the lives of three privates: Dan Fuselli, an Italian‐American who is a fatuously cheerful conformist, and only desires to secure an advance in rank; Chrisfield, a homesick Indiana farm boy who does become a corporal, but who consistently hates the horrors and regimentation of wartime and vents his feelings in violent outbursts; and his friend John Andrews, a hypersensitive, introverted Harvard graduate, whose ambition is to be a musician. He too hates the war, but, unable to find an outlet for his emotions, he is sullenly resigned until he achieves an escape through temporary service in Paris, where he studies music. Arrested for lack of a pass to the countryside, where he takes his French girl on an outing, Andrews is sent to a labor battalion. From it he escapes, meeting other deserters, including Chrisfield, who in the confusion of a battle had thrown a grenade and killed his hated sergeant. For a time Andrews hides successfully and begins to compose a symphonic work. When he is discovered, he faces the prospect of a firing squad with calm defiance and leaves his manuscript to be scattered by the wind.

Andrew Zachary Fire 1959–, American geneticist, b. Palo Alto, Calif., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1983. After a long association with the Carnegie Institution of Washington (1986–2003), Fire became a professor at Stanford Univ. in 2003. Fire and Craig Mello received the 2006 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their joint discovery of RNA interference, in which the activity of a specific gene is silenced by double-stranded RNA. In this catalytic process, double-stranded RNA sets in motion a biochemical mechanism that corrupts messenger RNA molecules carrying the same genetic code as that of the double-stranded RNA. RNA interference has providea new method for the study of gene function, and it has the potential to lead to the development of novel medical therapies.