Open AccessEndogenous siRNAs Derived from Transposons and mRNAs in Drosophila Somatic Cells
Author(s) -
Megha Ghildiyal,
Hervé Seitz,
Michael D. Horwich,
Chengjian Li,
Tingting Du,
Soohyun Lee,
Jia Xu,
Ellen L. W. Kittler,
Maria L. Zapp,
Zhiping Weng,
Phillip D. Zamore
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 12.556
H-Index - 1186
eISSN - 1095-9203
pISSN - 0036-8075
DOI - 10.1126/science.1157396
Subject(s) - small interfering rna , dicer , rna interference , biology , rna silencing , trans acting sirna , argonaute , piwi interacting rna , microbiology and biotechnology , rasirna , rna , gene silencing , genetics , gene
Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) direct RNA interference (RNAi) in eukaryotes. In flies, somatic cells produce siRNAs from exogenous double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) as a defense against viral infection. We identified endogenous siRNAs (endo-siRNAs), 21 nucleotides in length, that correspond to transposons and heterochromatic sequences in the somatic cells of Drosophila melanogaster. We also detected endo-siRNAs complementary to messenger RNAs (mRNAs); these siRNAs disproportionately mapped to the complementary regions of overlapping mRNAs predicted to form double-stranded RNA in vivo. Normal accumulation of somatic endo-siRNAs requires the siRNA-generating ribonuclease Dicer-2 and the RNAi effector protein Argonaute2 (Ago2). We propose that endo-siRNAs generated by the fly RNAi pathway silence selfish genetic elements in the soma, much as Piwi-interacting RNAs do in the germ line.
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