René Ketting worked as a Ph.D. student at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, and obtained his degree with honours from the University of Utrecht in 2000. He then worked as a postdoc in the lab of Ronald Plasterk, at the Hubrecht Laboratory in Utrecht, and worked as a guest in the laboratory of Greg Hannon at Cold Spring Harbor. In 2005 he became a staff member of the Hubrecht Laboratory.   As a graduate student, René was involved in discovering the link between RNA interference and the silencing of endogenous parasites like transposons. During his postdoc he contributed to the idea that RNA interference and gene silencing by micro RNAs share many cellular components. Gene regulation through RNA molecules is the central theme of René's lab, and two different model organisms are used in the experiments: zebrafish and C. elegans. These organisms are used in an attempt to answer questions regarding RNAi related processes in a biochemical, as well as in a genetic, way, with special attention being paid to the role of small RNA molecules in the formation and functioning of the germline. Other research interests include the maternal contribution and localization of mRNAs and RNA induced chromatin changes.