The team tested their new method on zebrafish, an assay that lets them determine the function of signals activated after fertilization. Yale geneticist Antonio Giraldez, the senior author of the paper describing the team's findings in the journal Nature Methods, compared the RNA signal activators to individual words in life's instructional commands. Aside from interpreting genetic elements of messages sent from mother to embryo before it develops, the assay could also be used to identify the RNA parts that trigger cancer-causing genes.