Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 108, Issue 1, Pages 409-414Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1009805108
Keywords
glycine; RNA interference; suppression
Categories
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01GM077590]
- Edward Mallinckrodt Foundation
- Monsanto Company/Washington University
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In plants, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) with sequence homology to transcribed regions of genes can guide the sequence-specific degradation of corresponding mRNAs, leading to posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS). The current consensus is that siRNA-mediated PTGS occurs primarily in the cytoplasm where target mRNAs are localized and translated into proteins. However, expression of an inverted-repeat double-stranded RNA corresponding to the soybean FAD2-1A desaturase intron is sufficient to silence FAD2-1, implicating nuclear precursor mRNA (pre-mRNA) rather than cytosolic mRNA as the target of PTGS. Silencing FAD2-1 using intronic or 3'-UTR sequences does not affect transcription rates of the target genes but results in the strong reduction of target transcript levels in the nucleus. Moreover, siRNAs corresponding to pre-mRNA-specific sequences accumulate in the nucleus. In Arabidopsis, we find that two enzymes involved in PTGS, Dicer-like 4 and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase 6, are localized in the nucleus. Collectively, these results demonstrate that siRNA-directed RNA degradation can take place in the nucleus, suggesting the need for a more complex view of the subcellular compartmentation of PTGS in plants.
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