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Casting Away the Shadows: Elucidating the Role of Light‐mediated Posttranscriptional Control in Plants
Author(s) -
Hernando Carlos E.,
Garcia Carolina,
Mateos Julieta L.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
photochemistry and photobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.818
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1751-1097
pISSN - 0031-8655
DOI - 10.1111/php.12762
Subject(s) - biology , rna splicing , alternative splicing , gene expression , gene , transcriptome , regulation of gene expression , computational biology , gene silencing , proteome , function (biology) , rna binding protein , rna , genetics , messenger rna
Light signals trigger precise changes in gene expression networks that activate distinctive developmental programs in plants. The transcriptome is shaped at different stages, both by the regulation of gene expression and also by posttranscriptional mechanisms that alter the sequence or abundance of the transcripts generated. Posttranscriptional mechanisms have attracted much interest in recent years with the advent of high‐throughput technologies and bioinformatics tools. One such posttranscriptional process, alternative splicing, increases proteome diversity without increasing gene number by changing the function of individual proteins, while another, mi RNA ‐mediated gene silencing, fine‐tunes the amount of mRNA produced. The manner in which plants make use of these two crucial posttranscriptional mechanisms to respond to light and adapt to their environment is the focus of active research. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge of light‐mediated posttranscriptional control in Arabidopsis thaliana and focus on the biological impact of the various posttranscriptional processes. We also discuss a potential cross talk between the alternative splicing and mi RNA pathways, highlighting the complexity of light responsiveness.